The Road So Far (this Time Around)
by 8.Years.Of.Silence
Summary: He woke with a jolt, sitting in the Impala on some backroad with Sammy sleeping shotgun, like always. Only no, not always. They had a bunker now. They had a home. Either Dean had finally lost it or Cas pulled one hell of a Hail Mary, because his little brother looked about ten years younger and his phone was saying it was 2005. Timeline AU **App Users: reviews contain SPOILERS**
1. Prologue

_**Summary**_ _: Cas pulled his broken body over the grass-covered graves beneath them. The buried dead that he and Sam would soon be among. But Dean was alive and only a few feet away. Only a few feet and he could fix this. He would fix it. There was still time: time to send him back, time to make the other choice, time to choose a different road. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **Story Warnings**_ _: Solid_ _ **T/PG-13**_ _rating for quite a bit of Dean-esque swearing and verbal blasphemy that bleeds into the narrative whenever he's cranky. Mild gore (nothing more than the show has), overall dark themes (nothing more than the show has), absolute AU from the first chapter onward (but still with almost everything the show has). Welcome to the party!_

 _ **SLASH W**_ _ **arning**_ _: Squint to see Destiel in the first half (subtext!) with just about the slowest burn towards relationship-status in the second. The romance in this story will attempt to stay true to all characters (no OOC here, I solemnly swear) and has some unique twists along the way. Romance is always a subplot for me; I'm an action/adventure gal first and foremost._

 _ **Chapter Warnings:**_ _Swearing, verbal blasphemy, character death, and the end of the world._

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 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Prologue

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 _Yes, there are two paths you can go by._

 _But in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on._

 _And it makes me wonder_

 _\- Led Zeppelin -_

He hurt everywhere. It wasn't the physical wounds: the couple of cracked ribs, the cuts and bruises – that one pretty deep gash across his lower back bleeding all over the scratchy grass. Truth was he'd gotten off easy and he knew it. Because it was Amara, and she couldn't hurt him any more than he could hurt her. Not really.

No, those weren't the real aches. The true pain was deeper than torn skin or muscle or bone. It was in his soul, whatever was left of it after all the years. His very being hurt.

Sam was dead. He was sure of it. The kid hadn't moved in far too long, and the amount of blood gathering under him was damning. His back was to him, lying on his side with his head awkwardly angled to form a dam against the growing puddle of red. Maybe it was better that way. Dean didn't think he could survive seeing Sam's lifeless eyes one more time in his life.

Cas was as good as dead too, if he was even in there anymore. Dean had realized too late that they went into this suicide mission without any proof that their friend was alive. Just went on the word of the freaking _devil_ and a God he expected less from than the King of Hell. He hadn't heard from Cas in….well, too long. Damn it, he should have at least made Lucifer let him surface before all of this went down. Let them say their goodbyes or whatever. Let him ask Cas _why_. Why had he said yes to the Devil.

Now the angel (angels, plural? God, he hoped plural) was writhing on his side, quaking in a pain Dean couldn't see. Shaking fingers were pressed against his shredded stomach in an attempt to staunch the tidal flow of blood and organs and light that was pure Grace. It was a losing battle and they both knew it.

Another tally on the scoreboard of friends and family dead and gone (at least they'd take the son of a bitch devil down with them this time).

Then there was Amara. She was losing too; he could feel it. And he goddamn hated himself for it, but it was part of the ache. She was going to die. God was going to kill her this time, because she would never let him seal her away again. The pain that thought caused was nothing physical.

Damn it, he had gone into this knowing she had to die. They'd gone to the cemetery (and why was it always a fucking cemetery?) knowing full well they were gonna take her down or die trying. And here they were. And it fucking hurt, in so many ways.

"Dean."

He blinked, dragging his eyes away from the Darkness. It was harder than he wanted to admit.

Cas was staring at him, all blue eyes, ashen skin, and dripping blood. Dean blinked again. He shifted, trying to move for the first time since he had hit the ground hard enough to crack those ribs. That was Cas staring at him. He couldn't say how he knew – didn't care anyway. That desperate, sad, guilty, fucking longing gaze was _his_ Cas. Not even Lucifer could fake those eyes.

The apology swimming in them fucking hurt. He wanted to tell him it was okay (it really wasn't), but he was so damn tired. Cloth shifted over grass as the angel dragged himself forward. He left behind blood and organs and grace. Dean wanted to tell him to stop.

What was the point?

The progress was painstaking. The angel inched towards him in a pathetic one-armed army crawl, his other hand holding his stomach together as he grabbed at soil and grass and _pulled_. Dean knew it had to hurt. His best friend was only killing himself faster. That should mean something: make him feel something. But everything was numb.

When Castiel got close enough, Dean reached out and closed his hand around the angel's wrist. Blue eyes locked onto his.

"Time," he rasped out, body shaking. "There's still t-time, Dean."

Dean didn't know what he meant. The words were gritted, heavy and laced with the end of the world. He was pretty sure Cas was wrong: they didn't have any time left. The angel sure didn't. Those eyes, which Dean once swore could look into his very soul (and, yeah, _angel,_ so they probably could), were now losing the light that fed them. That glow was a weak, dribbled trail seeping into the earth. Shit, Dean didn't even know if it was Cas or Lucifer fertilizing the planet.

He should have cared more about that than he did. He should have felt….something.

Dean swallowed, even as he felt Amara rallying her strength for one more – _one last_ – strike. Part of him, even now, yearned to save her. Part of him was pissed. His brother was dead. His best friend was bleeding out in front of him. His soul was aching for a woman hell-bent on destroying the fucking universe. The rest of him was just tired.

"Dean."

Cas was moving again, this time with purpose. He was leaving more of himself behind in his urgency. Dean wanted to tell him to stop or there'd be nothing left. The words stuck in his throat when he met the angel's gaze. It was still Cas in there (and he had _not_ panicked at the sudden thought that it might not be). Those eyes were still laced with all the hurt and wrong that Cas had been for…well, years, now.

Except now there was something else. There was a determination – a _fierceness_ – that Dean hadn't seen since the apocalypse. Through gritted teeth, Cas crawled on his torn belly. His grip inched up Dean's arm with every pained move until fingers finally, _finally_ , drug into the edges of a scar that had never faded.

Something – and Dean didn't even know how to describe it other than _bright_ – flared throughout his entire being and he seized with it. It flooded everything that he was to the brim and every inch of his body tensed at its suddenness. It didn't hurt, not really. It was just so _much_.

He felt more than heard the fighting pause. Amara's confusion and the silence of halted blades were a distant thing. Castiel's hand had found his mark and his world narrowed to that hand on his arm, their profound bond, and those blue eyes.

"Cas."

It was breathless and sharp. Had he even said it all? He was just as empty as he had been a second ago, and yet he was fucking overflowing. What was left of him, what hadn't disappeared in this blaring white supernova forming in his chest, was already backpedaling. No way was he spending his final moments having a goddamn mental chick-flick moment with an Angel of the Lord. No friggin' way.

When the overwhelming warmth flaredinto a fire _,_ he no longer cared if his manliness had gone full rainbow sparkles and glitter because _what the hell, Cas!_

The angel's eyes were lit by a determination only the Righteous Man had ever known, and it was the only thing he could see anymore. They glowed with the pale blue of Castiel's life force: all of it that he had left. His skin was lit by an undercurrent of light. Blue spilled from around clenched teeth. There was a plan there; Dean could see it in those eyes before he lost them to the light.

A Hail Mary, the last act of a fucked up play, and Dean knew right then that he wasn't gonna like the ending.

"Good luck, Dean."

Fingers pressed to his forehead, smearing blood and gore and grace. They left a gaping torso unattended, open to spill liquid light onto the grave below. Dean wanted to cry out, to tell him to stop, to ask why, what he was thinking, what he was doing-

Someone – a woman – screamed. Heat flooded him and it was too much and then he was screaming too. The grip on his arm was fucking _piercing_ and _Jesus Christ_ , Cas must be trying to claw his way into his entire being through one fucking handprint. The world spun and warped, and his stomach was somewhere near his throat and possibly inside out and _holy shit, he was going to die._

And then there was only darkness.


	2. Season 1: Chapter 1

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns:**_ _I was a little disappointed with the Season 11 finale, so I decided to change a few things. I might have gone a tad overboard..._

 _This is a very large scale story I'm tackling, so bear with me. Current estimation puts it at 120 chapters, covering seasons 1-5. It is not fully written, and I am a slow writer. I post once a week on Sundays, as long as I have enough chapters stockpiled to do so. Posting switches to every other week only when I fall behind and need time to play catchup. It is my goal to never make you wait longer than two weeks, except for a month break between seasons (roughly every 30 chapters)._

 _ **-Reviews**_ _: I am the people-pleasing, self-doubting kind of author who thrives on commentary. A simple dropped line to tell me you're out there or that you enjoyed a particular thing in a chapter goes a long way for my muse. I really appreciate anyone willing to leave a comment now and again, so please review when something I write strikes your fancy._

 _-_ _ **Beta**_ _: Last author note! This story is un-beta'd. I attempt several read-throughs at various levels of production, but I know there are still typos and grammatical errors. They are all mine, and I apologize for any disruption to the story they incur. Feel free to point them out to me and I'll address them asap._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:**_ _A lot of Dean swearing through the narration ahead._

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 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Chapter 1

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Reality returned to him with all the force of an eighteen-wheeler. He sat bolt-upright with a sharp exhale, a tearing in his throat, and a pounding heart. He heaved and gasped for air as though he'd just finished running a marathon, yet his muscles were not strained. His lungs were not pushed past capacity. His veins were empty of the adrenaline that usually accompanied an impromptu sprint in his chosen career.

"Dean!"

Where was he? What happened? He was definitely amped for a fight, but no fight presented itself. Caught up with the pounding of his heart, he frantically scanned his surroundings. There was nothing but the quiet interior of the impala and the empty backroad beyond the windshield. So what had woken him?

"Dean!"

He whipped his head to the right (and damn, _whiplash_ ) to focus on his younger brother, who was looking at him with wide, worried eyes. Of course it was Sammy, sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala, probably woken up with half a heart attack from whatever nightmare Dean had been having while they camped out on the side of the road in Podunk-fucking-nowhere.

Like always.

Dean's breath hitched at the thought because _no_ , not like always, not in a really long time. Because now they had the bunker and their own freaking bedrooms with actual _beds_ , and they had a home and a dungeon and a war room.

And Sam was looking at him like he was crazy and, hell, maybe he was because his brother was wearing the face of a fucking _twelve year old._

Okay, maybe not a twelve year old, but still a kid. Like a twenty-something, college-aged, douchebag, chess-club nerdery, going-to-law-school, kid face. And _holy shit_ , wait a second, hold up, what the hell had Cas done to him?

Shit, _Cas!_

He spun around the best he could in the Impala, looking around them and then craning his neck to check the back seat. As if the angel could be hanging out in the backseat waiting to pop up with jazz hands and a cheesy 'Surprise!'

Dean really didn't have time to examine his sanity right now, so he chose to ignore the odd visual. He'd blame it on the blood loss. Which he was no longer suffering from, apparently. He patted himself down, checking for the hurts he knew he'd been feeling not five minutes ago. Nothing.

With sudden realization crashing down hard, he reached up and grabbed the rear view mirror to adjust it until he was staring at himself. He froze at the wide-eyed person looking back at him. _Fuck_ , had he ever actually looked that young? He couldn't help it – he ran a hand down his face in amazement, pulled at the tight skin lacking wrinkles and scars. Hell, he was practically a kid himself.

He was damn gorgeous, that's what he was.

"Dean!"

Sammy was still calling his name, although it sounded like panic was giving way to exasperation. Dean turned to him, eyes wide and hand still pinching at his mouth and cheek.

"…Huh?"

Sam made bitchface #7 (" _Really, Dean? Really?"_ ) and stared at him expectantly. When he didn't move, his brother blew out a breath of frustrated air. "You done checking yourself out?"

Dean snatched his hand away and his cheek snapped back into place with a wet little pop. He had _not_ been checking himself out. It wasn't every day you lost like ten years, is all. Speaking of years, he glanced around again. He really needed to figure out where he was (most importantly, _when_ ), but his eyes kept drifting back to Sam.

He looked so damn young. So...light. It was freaky.

Logically, Dean knew what this was. He'd had enough experience with angelic DeLoreans to know this was real. But even with four trips under his belt, he couldn't get his head quite around this one.

He'd never been zapped back into a younger version of himself, for starters. The other times had been well before he'd even had a body to get zapped into. To suddenly have years of aches and pains vanish – from old scars and mended bones to plain old aging crap like arthritis. It was all gone, replaced with a vigor and freshness he hadn't felt in so long that he'd forgotten what being young was even like.

And he was steadfastly _not_ thinking about the yawning hole in his chest, ever present since he'd been yanked out of hell. Always there, always aching. Or, at least, it had been, until about five minutes ago. For the first time in more than half a decade (and it was really _so much fucking more_ than six years; it was decades upon decades of torturing souls on the rack and the apocalypse and purgatory and the mark and the Darkness), Dean now felt whole. There was a warmth in his chest that was trying to fill his entire body and he couldn't remember if that was _normal._ It had been so long since normal was even on the table.

Was this what it was like to time travel back to a point when you still existed? Did you overwrite your past self? Shit, was he overwriting things now? Dean stopped at the thought. He took in and let out a slow, measured breath. Was he changing the future? Everything they'd been through? _Could he_?

 _"There's still time, Dean."_

Shit. Shit! Had he meant there was time to fix things? Or was he talking about actual Time, like the proper fucking noun? As in, we can use Time as a desperate last ditch Hail Mary and fix _everything_. Cas wouldn't have sent him back if it wasn't a possibility.

"Cas," he muttered in a single breath. There was no way. No way the angel had- that he could- Dean looked over at his younger brother (and damn, if that wasn't the most accurate description ever). Sammy was still staring at him, still torn between annoyance and panic. Dean knew that expression, even on a younger model. Panic was winning.

 _Join the fucking club_ , he thought. Because it couldn't be. It couldn't. Cas couldn't have sent him back to change…. _everything_. He knew Sammy – he _knew_ him – like he knew himself. Hell, better probably. This was pre-apocalypse Sam. This, this was pre- Dean's death. He knew the difference, could see it in the lack of guilt and self-loathing and just _weight_ in his brother's shoulders: in his gaze.

This….Dean glanced around again. This might even be- But no, it probably wasn't. He spotted a phone sitting on the dash and went for it. He needed to know the date and he needed to know it right fucking now.

"Who's Cass?"

He ignored his brother, not even hearing the question – the several he'd been asking. Instead he fumbled for the device ( _Jesus Christ, is that a fucking flip phone? You've got to be kidding me_ ) and pried it open. The initial date wasn't helpful, just the month and day. Apparently it was November 1st, which was absolutely terrifying because it definitely hadn't been November fifteen minutes ago. And even though he knew, he _knew_ , what was going on, each piece of proof was still jarring; worse, it didn't rule out what he was dangerously starting to suspect.

It took him a minute to navigate the older technology, but when he finally did, he forgot how to breathe. November 1st, 2005.

Fucking hell. Mother of all mother-fucking, time-jumping, dick ex-angels. Cas sent him back to….to before everything. _Everything_.

Two thousand and fucking five!

He stared at Sam, who was definitely panicking now, trying to get something (anything) out of his brother. Not that Dean heard any of it. Cas had sent him back to before the apocalypse. Before Hell and his deal. Before….Dean swallowed, looking away from his damn young younger brother who had never looked more innocent.

Before Jess died.

He reached forward and turned the keys in the ignition. Baby lit up like a purring dream and even a time-jumping, panic-inducing, apocalypse-averting epiphany couldn't stop his grin. He wasn't the only hot, young thing on this backroad tonight. She was in drive and flipping a U-turn before he could really think about it. He didn't need to think about it.

"Dean, what the hell?" Sam scrambled for his seatbelt while bracing himself on the dash as his body pressed into the door. He looked all kinds of ready to wrestle the wheel away from his questionably-unstable brother. A year or two from now and he wouldn't hesitate.

At this point, though, Dean wasn't even sure the kid had a license (and okay, Sam had learned how to drive when he was nine, but that was so not the point). The little salad-eating giant was gripping the door handle as Dean hit the gas a little harder than strictly necessary. Except he had just been sent hurtling ten years into the past, so 'necessary' could suck it for all he cared. Sammy seemed to disagree, if the white knuckle grip was anything to go by.

God, he was so young ( _and wimpy! Bitch_.)

With gritted teeth, as if he could hear Dean's internal monologue, he ground out, "Where are we going?"

"Back to Stanford." Because that was an easy one. They were going to get far away from whatever hunt he'd dragged his brother back into. Sam was going back to school where Dean would make sure Jess stayed alive and his moose of a brother stayed educated and the two got married and had babies or something. All apple-pie-normal.

Maybe a dog instead of babies. Sam liked dogs. Although Dean would make a kick-ass Uncle if it came to it.

His answer had momentarily shut Sammy up. At least until he pulled bitchface #1 (" _What? That doesn't make any sense, Dean. Don't be an idiot.")_.

"What? That doesn't make any- Dean, what about Dad?"

Dean managed not to jerk the steering wheel or all-out slam the breaks to a grinding halt as his brother's words registered. Instead, he let out the slowest breath he possibly could while still breathing. Shit. _Shit. Shit. Shit_. Dad was still alive. Dad was still _alive_. It was 2005: before the crash and the hospital and Azazel ( _Yellow Eyes. We called him Yellow Eyes_ ) and John's deal and _shit_. His knuckles tighten on the wheel. Dad was alive.

"I'll…uh," he had to take a moment to clear his throat around the giant fucking lump of _Dad is still alive_. "I'll find him. Alone," he added hastily, chancing a glance at his brother. "You're going back to school."

Soon as he killed the demon hanging out in Sam's friend ( _Brad? Think it was Brad_ ). Kill the demon, save Jess, save Sam. No hunting, no demon blood, no dying. No Devil wearing him to the prom and all the crap after that. Piece of pie.

…Except he didn't currently have anything to kill a demon. Craptastic. No demon-killing knife (no Ruby to give it to them yet – and hopefully not ever, if he had anything to say about it), no Colt (shit, when did those vampires kill Elkins? Had it been 2005? Or 2006? What month? Crap, crappity, crap crap. Maybe they should make a detour to Colorado…) And no angel blades (…no Cas, either, despite sending up another half dozen silent prayers.)

Damn it, how had they even made it through the apocalypse the first time around?

An exorcism would have to be good enough. Maybe he could send the ass-hat back to Azazel with a message. Maybe one for Lilith, too. And shit, _Lilith_. Damn it, this was already making his head hurt. It had all been so long ago – so many crises and bad decisions and ends of the world ago.

"What about the thing killing people in Jericho? The EVP on dad's voicemail?"

Huh?

Jericho. Well, at least he knew where they were now. It sounded familiar. Dean wracked his brain. What had they been hunting when he picked Sam up from school? He vaguely remembered a motel room covered in victims, all male, all killed traveling a backroad. A creepy chick in a white dress and Ring-worthy black hair. Right! Cars, bridges, unfaithful men, and a suicide victim who'd killed her kids.

"The woman in white?" Dean gave a nonchalant wave of his hand, proud of himself for remembering. He could so totally pull this Time thing off. No problem. "I'll take care of her when I come back for Dad."

Sam sputtered. "The woman in- It's a woman in white?"

Okay. Apparently they hadn't known what it was yet. Smooth. Real smooth.

"Dean, how did you-" Sam made a face, part worry, part panic, and part…constipation? Dean wasn't sure what that last one was about. His brother's voice was oddly quiet, though, when he asked, "How did you know that?"

"Uh," the older hunter bobbed his head back and forth looking for something that sounded halfway plausible. "Figured it out? You know, all male victims, died along a road. Probably pulled over to pick up a beautiful, stranded woman. Came to me while I was, uh, sleeping."

Sam was still staring with Constipation Face (maybe that should be added to the list of Bitchfaces. Lucky #11?). So the older Winchester did what he always did best and ignored it, focusing on the road. He was going to have to start stockpiling some better excuses if he was going to slip up this freakin' much.

"Dean," Sammy started slowly, words measured with just barely withheld concern and frustration. "Turn the car back around. We need to find dad."

He thought for all of three seconds before going for gold in the Stupid Things Future Dean has Told Past Sam. "Dad's not in Jericho."

"What? Wh- Then where is he?"

Dean shook his head. "Don't know." He barely managed to hold back the _'don't care_ '. "But he's not there."

"Dean-"

"Oh come on, Sammy!" He looked over at his brother finally, because this wasn't the Sam he knew, the Sam that had reconciled with Dad. Not yet. This was the kid who wasn't supposed to care about John Winchester – who wanted out of the life. Who ran away to get it. And Dean was trying to honor that this time around, because Sam had been right all along. The further away from Dad they got, the better. And yeah, it hurt like hell to say it, knowing the man was still alive. Knowing he could still be saved.

Maybe if Dean could just find him, warn him about Azazel and all his plans. If he could change Sam's fate this time around, if he could stop the apocalypse, maybe he could save Dad, too.

Hell, who was he kidding?

John Winchester had never been save-able. Dean had too much experience this time around to make the same mistakes. He couldn't save them both, and Sam was more important. The further away from John Winchester and his crusade they got, the better. He wasn't going to let them – let _Sam_ – walk the same bloody road again. Not when he could stop it.

He tightened his grip on the wheel. "Dad's not in some backwater town hunting a woman in white. Or a wendigo, or a ghost, or any other case he can't be bothered with that he'll stick on us just to keep us busy. This is another one of his fucked up missions – send us off hunting while he's busy with Az- with- with the thing that killed mom."

He chewed on the inside of his cheek. He was saying too much, and he hadn't meant to say any of it and shit, shit, _shit._ He just wanted to get Sam back to school, where he would be _safe._ Then he could focus on the rest of it.

 _Damn it, Cas, you couldn't have sent me back one more freaking day? Twenty four more freaking hours and we could have avoided all of this!_

Twenty four hours earlier and he would have never pulled Sammy back in. Sam would never have known dad was missing.

His brother was back to staring. Dean twisted his hands around the steering wheel and blew out a measured breath. He was going to have to explain at least some of this. He probably wasn't acting very 'Dean circa 2005'.

"Look, I should have known better, okay? Shouldn't have dragged you into it. I'll find Dad on my own. You wanted out, well you've got it. We'll go back to Stanford, and you're gonna go to that law-school thing. You'll become a fancy lawyer and marry that girl and live happily-friggin-ever-after. Apple pie life, right?"

Okay, so his voice may have cracked at the end there and this was definitely not any better than the last bunch of shit he _hadn't meant to say_.

 _Note to self. When stockpile of excuses runs out, it's time to_ _ **shut up**_.

Seriously, Cas. Twenty-four fucking hours! Was that so much to ask?

"Stop the car."

Dean heaved a sigh. Damn it, now _Samantha_ was going to go all chick-flick, I-worry-about-you and blah blah blah on him. And he really, really didn't think he could handle that on top of everything else. "Sammy-"

"Dean, stop the damn car!"

He did. He pulled the Impala onto the shoulder and put her in park. It was silent as Sam tried to work out the right words to say. His pinched face told Dean it wasn't an easy battle.

The older hunter tried not to watch his brother (also a losing battle), because it was freaky – so freaky – but it was also so damn good to see Sam without all the pain and the sorrow and the fucking _tiredness_ that had been there since…Well, since he'd gone to get him from Stanford. Since Jess.

"Dean," Sammy got his vocal cords working again and he put on his ' _this is serious'_ face. "What's going on?"

"Nothing, Sammy."

"Sam."

Dean almost snorted. Right. He'd forgotten all about that. 'Sammy' was a twelve year old kid, if he recalled (oh, if his brother only new the irony. He freaking _was_ a kid!) So he nodded and said, "Sam." And it wasn't the least bit sarcastic _at all_. Really, it wasn't.

His brother's eyes narrowed. "You're obviously not okay."

Dean rolled his own, giving his brother a pointed look. "You just told me not to! I'm doing what you said!"

"Yeah, and since when do you listen to me, huh?"

"Since-" Shit, nope, couldn't say that, that hadn't happened yet. "Since-" No, couldn't say that either. Dean huffed in annoyance. He'd forgotten how stubborn and immature and stupid his little brother could be (he really hadn't). "Damn it, Sam, can we just get back on the road?"

"No. Not until you tell me what is going on with you!" Sam waved his hands around as he spoke and Dean allowed himself to be distracted by them rather than focus on his brother's concern and annoyance and, oh right, actual spot-on point.

Because no way was he going to come out with, _'Well, Sammy, I just time traveled back a decade from the brink of the actual end of the world (not those other times, nah, those weren't even close compared to this one), so, yeah, I'm a little different. Astute observation there, Sherlock. But no biggie! I'm just gonna save you and your girlfriend and the whole world and we're all going to be apple pie.'_

But Sam was still talking and Dean really needed to get his head in the game. "You were hell bent on finding dad three hours ago."

"Yeah, well, Dad's an asshole." He said it before he could think about it. _So much for head in the game._

It's the second time that night that Dean rendered his brother speechless. He ran a hand over his eyes. This wasn't going to be as easy as he fooled himself into thinking. And why should it be? Nothing ever was. He had too much weight himself, too much baggage, to ever pretend that he didn't know what he did. To be what he had once been.

Time for Plan B. Too bad he didn't actually have one (not that he'd had a Plan A, either).

"Look, Sammy- _Sam_. Dad's not here. And no, I don't know where he is." Which was actually true. He didn't have a clue because they never had figured it out.

"But it doesn't matter," he continued, forcing his brain to focus and _think like me ten years ago_. "He's never going to stop hunting the thing that killed mom. And obviously, he doesn't want our help doing that."

Sam fell silent, watching his older brother with an unreadable expression. Dean didn't hold his gaze for long. They needed to get back on the road.

"Dean, there's still a woman in white back in Jericho, if that's what's killing those people."

The hunter nods. "I'll take care of it. Soon as I drop you off, I'll come back and gank the bitch." His memory on it was a little hazy, but he was pretty sure the trick had been getting her back into her old house. He could do that solo and not even break a sweat.

"Saving people, hunting things," he added suddenly, the words coming to him from a long ago memory. Dean turned to look at his brother head on. "That's my gig – and I'm good with that. But that's not your life, Sammy. It doesn't have to be and I, uh," he shook his head. No chick-flick moments. "I shouldn't have asked you to come."

Sam was already shaking his head full of ridiculously long hair and giving him those sympathetic puppy dog eyes. "You needed help, Dean. And I want to help. Let's find Dad."

He shook his head. "Not necessary, Sammy. _Sam_."

His brother let out a huff of air. "At least let me help with the woman in white."

"Nope. I got this."

Sam sat back in his seat in defeat. He was still eyeing Dean worryingly, but it looked like he was out of things to say. So Dean pulled back on the road and headed for Stanford, his mind running through plans to save Jess.

-o-o-o-

They were halfway to Stanford (back the way they had come just yesterday, though it'd been significantly longer in Dean's case) when Sam decided he wasn't out of things to say, after all.

"Who's Cass?"

This time the car did swerve dangerously as Dean's knee-jerk reaction sent them careening onto the dirt shoulder of the I-49. He corrected quickly and expertly (with a mental apology to his Baby for the rough treatment) but Sam's knuckles were once more white on the dashboard and Dean's heart was pounding a mile a minute.

He rubbed absently at the hammering in his chest and decided that even if he could answer honestly, he didn't want to talk about it. About the blood fertilizing the graveyard, the outpouring of grace seeping into the earth, or the apology in blue eyes that belonged to his friend for the first time in weeks. The back of his brother's head, unmoving and soaking up a pool of red. The finality of that last ' _Good luck, Dean_.'

Things that would never happen again, so they didn't matter. They didn't exist anymore.

Instead, he willed his heart to calm and responded casually, "He's no one."

Not casually enough, however, for Sam to miss the choice of pronoun, identifying him as _someone_. Eventually, he stopped staring at his brother, stopped waiting for him to say more, and stared out the windshield instead.

Dean knew that Sam was far from letting it go and was only biding his time. He hoped of all the many things his brother could latch onto in this situation, of all the slip-ups he could dig his mental claws into and refuse to give up, Cas would be one he let slide.

-o-o-o-

It was nearly five am when they pulled up outside of Sam's apartment. It was still dark, the sun not due to rise for another two hours, and Sam was yawning as he pulled his gargantuan frame out of the passenger side. Slumped shoulders and a hung head marked the giant's form as he headed for the front door, digging into his pocket for the key.

Dean darted up beside him as soon as he realized where his brother was headed. "Uh, hey, why don't you get your bag from the trunk? I'll get the door."

Sam scrunched his face up in his classic _'I'm tired and you're not making any sense_ ' expression (bitchface #8). "Dude, if Jess wakes up to you tripping around the house in the dark, she'll _freak_."

He slid the key into the lock and turned it. Dean tensed beside him, desperately trying to think up a way to keep Sam out of the house long enough for him to clear it. Truth was, he didn't know exactly _when_ Brad (Brody? Brian? Shit.) had stalked out Jess. From the little he'd gleamed of the conversation he was too busy being locked in the bathroom to hear, the demon could have held her for longer than just the night they returned.

How had the douchebag even known when they were coming back first time around? He'd killed her on the anniversary of their mom's death. But would he have done that even if they hadn't returned in time, or if they'd come back early? How long had he been waiting for them to return - had he had Jess tied up all weekend? Did he have her tied up in there now? Dean couldn't remember anything from the police report – it wasn't like she'd been missing for the two or so days they'd been gone. Had the demon been watching for their return, instead?

Surreptitiously, the hunter scanned the rest of the neighborhood. They were surrounded by other apartments, probably occupied by sleeping students. The windows were dark: most had curtains drawn or shades pulled. The ones that didn't were ominous, gaping mouths of impenetrable black that stared at them, surrounded them, hiding any number of eyes. Dean glared at them each in turn, daring one to have a demon begging for his throat to be cut.

He shifted restlessly and focused back on his brother as the lock shifted, the door slid open, and Sam disappeared in to the darkness beyond. If he noticed how close his brother was sticking as they walked through the house practically in tandem, Sam didn't say anything. Dean checked each room, hand wrapped around the hilt of the gun tucked in the back of his jeans. It wouldn't do much against a demon, but it was better than being weaponless.

The Sasquatch stopped abruptly, causing a near nose-dive of older brother into younger. Dean pulled back at the last second, feeling the brush of Sam's shirt against the tip of his face. He glared at the man, but was immediately on guard.

"What is it?"

Sam gave him a funny look. "My bedroom, Dean. You going to follow me in there, too?"

Dean scoffed, making a face of his own. He backed off, acting insulted just long enough for his brother to shake his head and disappear into the dark room. The door shut behind him with a click and Dean tried to ignore his twitch of nerves.

The demon probably wasn't in the bedroom. His gut wasn't screaming at him, no inherent danger he could sense. But that wasn't solid proof, and Jess had died in the bedroom.

The door made a soft scraping nose over the carpet as he pushed it open. The room beyond was pretty dark, but he could make out the silhouette of a single occupant in the bed, lit by a line of yellow light coming from beneath a door to the left. Bathroom.

The light flickered off and the door opened a second later. Dean slid back outside, turning around to survey the rest of the apartment.

Okay, probably no demon, then. He didn't smell sulfur (although with a demon as undercover as Brad/Brian/Brett, he probably wouldn't). Good. That was…good. That meant he had time to plan. He headed back out to the car, throwing open the trunk to grab Sam's bag. The kid's laptop was in there. He'd have to make good use of that once Sasquatch passed out.

He quickly popped the hidden panel and snagged a couple of weapons, a container of salt, and two canteens of water that would be turned holy five minutes after Sam conked out. He was on guard duty tonight, even if his brother wouldn't know it.

Dean went back into the house to find Sam standing in the middle of the living room, having turned on a small table lamp next to the sofa. He tossed him the go-bag, wrapping the strap of his own weapon-filled duffle over his shoulder to hide the obvious shape of the sawed-off inside.

"So, er," Sam mumbled as he distractedly set his bag down on the chair next to him, looking every bit the twenty-two year old kid he was. "I was hoping- that is… um, you probably shouldn't drive more tonight without some sleep, Dean."

The older hunter raised his eyebrows. Part of him wanted to smirk – oh, part of him wanted to laugh. Poor Sammy, beating around the bush trying to figure out how to suggest he stay the night without actually saying it. 2005 Dean would have been insulted – would have insisted he was _fine_ to keep on driving. Would have done so just to prove it, too.

"Do you have a place to crash?"

Dean grinned, slinging the bag off his shoulder to land carelessly on the sofa. "What? Your couch too good for me?"

Sam blinked in surprise, jaw dropping a bit and this time Dean let out a chuckle. Poor kid. The younger Winchester was already back-pedaling, claiming it was fine, and he could stay as long as he wanted, and maybe they could get breakfast or something the next morning (Sam code for 'don't you dare leave without saying goodbye, Dean!')

He was smiling – all dopey, happy, _innocent_ Sammy – when he said he'd love for Dean to meet Jess. Properly, this time.

The smirk slid off Dean's face as he remembered that this wasn't a family reunion; he had people to save, a _job to do_. And he wouldn't be sticking around afterwards. He was going to have to keep his distance from Sammy, too, if he wanted to keep him out this time. No Uncle Dean in this future, either.

A memory flashed through his mind of a Sam who barely tolerated him, who barely _knew_ him, sitting across the table at a family dinner with his pretty wife by his side. A forgotten dream tainted with the bitter aftertaste of a Djinn.

Dean didn't trust his mouth to form words through the giant lump in his throat. So he nodded and smiled and hoped it didn't look as fake as it felt. Judging by Sam's laugh and quick assurance _('It won't be that bad, Dean. You'll love her,'_ ) he hadn't been very successful.

He waited until the kid was out – trying not to hear the mumbled words of reassurance to a half-asleep Jess and waiting for the light to go out – before he pulled the shotgun out of his duffle. He purified both of the canteens with a rosemary and a mumbled prayer. After a quick lightbulb moment, he did so again with several glasses he stole and filled from the kitchen sink, placing them strategically throughout the house.

He slipped an anti-possession amulet on the second he realized his chest was missing the very reassuring ink of his tattoo. He thought about sneaking into the bedroom and getting one around Sam and Jess, but figured there was no way he'd pull that off (or talk his way out when Sam caught him). So he settled on painting devils traps on the undersides of what rugs he could find, putting one directly outside the bedroom door.

With the windows strategically re-salted (as unnoticeably as possible) and a few symbols added to the pre-existing carvings in the doorframes (that-a-boy, Sammy), Dean settled onto the couch with the laptop, a sawed-off, and a canteen.

He spent the next several hours researching everything he could on Sam's demonic best friend, stubbornly _not_ thinking about a lonely future without his brother by his side.


	3. Season 1: Chapter 2

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Dean's still swearing, Sam's making extra bitchfaces, and Brody is a douchebag with perfect hair._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 2

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

It was well after the sun came up that Sam stumbled out of his bedroom to find his brother chilling on the sofa with his laptop open, typing away. He was wearing a fresh shirt and had made himself right at home, apparently. Which was…odd, Sam thought. Pretty domestic for his very nomadic older brother.

"Hope you don't mind," Dean answered his questioning glance at the laptop offhandedly and hardly apologetic.

"Dude, you better not be watching porn."

His older brother smirked and winked at him. Sam made a disgusted noise but was grinning as he ventured into the kitchen for some orange juice. He'd forgotten what being around his brother was like. He didn't realize how much he had missed him these last four years.

"Hey, uh, so," Dean cleared his throat from the living room, which meant he had done something Sam wasn't gonna like. "This guy kept trying to message you like an hour ago."

Sam ducked his head back into the living room. "Guy?"

If Dean hadn't been so focused on lying convincingly, he might have cracked a pretty good joke on that one. Sam was so easy; ten years hadn't changed that. As it was, he just nodded and pointed to the computer in his lap. "Brad or something?"

"Brady?"

"Yeah!" Dean said with maybe a little too much enthusiasm. Because trying to find that asshole through the school website had been a _bitch_ without knowing his actual name. "Uh, I mean yeah. So I answered."

Sam automatically groaned.

"Hey, in my defense," he raised his hands, "you're the one who left your laptop out."

"It wasn't out, it was in my bag," the giant answered without missing a beat, pointing to the go-bag still sitting on the chair and looking more than a bit rummaged through. "And it's password protected, Dean."

The older hunger gave his most winning smile. He may not know computers, but he knew Sammy.

"Ugh, whatever." His moose of a brother rolled his eyes and retreated back into the kitchen. "How badly did you traumatize him?"

Dean balked. "I did not _traumatize_ him. Guy called me out pretty quickly, actually."

Which had all been part of Dean's plan. Well, the part about messaging the guy hadn't exactly been one of the steps, but the rest totally was. He'd still been trying to figure out the asshat's name when a chat popped up in the bottom right corner of the screen from one, _SexyStanfordDr1084._

Ass. Hole.

Not one to pass up the opportunity (and feeling pretty certain it was Brady on the other line, considering his first line was _'You back in town, bro?'_ Bro? Really? It was 2005, for fuck's sake), Dean had set about making a poor imitation of Sam. Brady had called him on it pretty quickly, and he'd revealed himself as Sammy's older brother, in town visiting and concerned for his widdle brother's virtue while all alone in the big scary world of frats and co-eds.

The demonic scumbag had eaten it up, no doubt chomping at the bit (and foaming at the mouth) for an opportunity to get close to Dean Winchester. Even pre-seals, he was pretty sure the troops down south were talking about the war to come. Especially the guy tasked as his brother's keeper. Azazel would have given him the basics, at least.

"Of course he did," Sam was saying in response to Brady's so called 'intelligence' at noticing it wasn't the high IQ future-lawyer Winchester he'd been talking to. Yeah. Real genius, that one. "He's pre-med, Dean. He's not an idiot."

It took all of the older Winchester's willpower not to respond with something that would most likely get him into trouble.

"Bitch." Well, maybe just a little bit of trouble.

"Jerk."

Sam walked back in with a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee. He set the latter on the low table in front of Dean, next to the abandoned laptop. "So?"

"So I'm meeting him for a beer."

Sam pulled Bitchface #4 ( _"Stay out of my stuff, Dean!")_

"Dude."

"What?" Dean had the decency to at least _act_ insulted. "I can't get to know your friends?"

Sam leveled a serious look at him, eyes narrowed and suspicion fully bared. "Is that what you're doing?"

Dean scoffed. "I'm just checking up on my baby brother. Making sure you haven't gotten yourself into trouble in the scary world of higher education."

Sam actually had gotten into trouble, sarcasm aside. Though with the plot those bastards downstairs were cooking up, it wasn't exactly Sammy's fault he hadn't caught on. Even the most seasoned hunter wouldn't have seen it coming. Dean certainly hadn't.

His brother, however, didn't know any of that and currently looked seconds away from an explosion. "Dean, none of my friends are-" he cast a glance to the bedroom door, where faint sounds of running water could heard, "-monsters! They're just normal college kids living normal lives!"

The words made Dean's stomach twist. _If only._

"Then there's nothing to bitch about," he said instead, putting on his best 'I'm older and that's that' face. "Just two dudes grabbing a beer."

"Fine," his brother snapped. "But Dean, I swear if you-"

"Relax, Samantha. It's just a beer and some friendly, _normal_ conversation."

Sam still looked ready to punch him.

"So." He stood up with a grin. "We grabbing breakfast, or what?"

-0-0-0

Sam hadn't been wrong. It was hard not to like Jess. She was beautiful, glowing with love for his brother, witty and smart, and had a biting tongue that gave back as good as she got. Dean liked her already, and they'd only just had breakfast.

Dean hadn't been wrong either. She was _way_ out of Sam's league. It was ridiculously obvious how head over heels the kid was for her. Dean wasn't sure if he was closer to tearing up or throwing up.

Of course, since Winchesters did neither, he was perfectly fine.

Brunch that morning was possibly the most surreal experience of Dean's life, which was saying something. Seeing his brother happy, in love, and perfectly _normal_ only sharpened his conviction to change what was coming. His brother deserved this. And it didn't take much to see Jess deserved life.

By the end of the meal, Dean had every confidence that he could do this, for them. He was going to change the future.

-0-0-0-

Sam tried to invite himself to the Dean-Meets-Brady shindig no less than three times. It got to the point where Dean finally told him to go get his own friend. Sam made the ultimate bitchface at that and Jess dragged him off to go lick his wounds in the safety of their very demon-proofed apartment.

When Brady showed up at the off-campus bar, Dean was already waiting for him against the trunk of the Impala. He hadn't (wouldn't? How did tenses even work when you were from the future?) changed much in ten years, and Dean instantly recognized him with his douchebag hair and rows of perfect punch-worthy teeth.

The guy gave an award-winning smile (seriously, how much would it throw off his plan if he just socked the asshole in the mouth right now?) and stuck his hand out as he approached. Dean shook it with a grin of his own.

It was only too easy in the end. He'd forgotten how simple hunting had been when the demons still underestimated the Winchester boys. Okay, they'd never really _stopped_ underestimating them, but this was a whole other level of naïve.

He pulled out two beers from a cooler in the back seat, popped their tops, and handed one to Brady with a line about always having a few on hand for the road.

"Thought you wouldn't mind a freebie."

The demon grinned like an idiot (which he was) and clinked the neck of his bottle to Dean's. Then it was as simple as sitting back and waiting for the smoke and sizzling flesh, burned by a mouthful of holy watered-down beer. Getting him into the devil-trap-lined trunk was as easy as pop, shove, slam.

Now he was driving out of Palo Alto and towards the hills that lined the west side of the peninsula. There were a ton of state parks and preservations that way that would guarantee an empty stretch of woods where he could interrogate and exorcise the son-of-a-bitch without risk. He'd been able to scope it all out using Sammy's laptop that morning. He'd settled on the ridgeline when he realized he wouldn't have time to sneak out and prep a devil's trap even if he did find a good abandoned building for it. Sam had been pretty insistent they spend the day touring Stanford and the surrounding area.

He had ignored the twist in his gut all day as Sam proudly showed off his perfectly normal life while Dean walked beside him, planning how to kill his brother's best friend.

Popping the trunk revealed a red-faced, spitting Brady. The demon surged forward, arms outstretched for Dean's throat. The devils trap caught him before he ever got close and threw him back into the trunk.

"Sit tight, princess. It'll be your turn in just a second."

He was reaching into the trunk for the spray paint (carefully avoiding the still violent demon) when a set of headlights rounded the dirt road and lit up the wooded sanctuary he'd chosen for the exorcism.

Swearing, he slammed the trunk (feeling just a _little_ satisfied when he heard the metal connect with the demon's skull on its way down) and turned, hiding the shotgun and holy water behind him in a single motion. The car coming down the path careened to a stop a good ten feet away from the Impala. Dean swore even louder when the door swung open and Sam of all people climbed out, gun of his own aimed at Dean.

"Sammy, what the hell-"

"Let him go." The gun was perfectly level and Dean made a face at it.

There was suddenly banging on the trunk, frantic and desperate. "Sam? Sam, help! Please, he's crazy!"

"Shut it!" Dean barked over his shoulder. His shotgun remained on the trunk behind him, not that he'd ever pull it on his brother.

Sam tightened his hand around the grip of his handgun, heedless of being the only one aiming his weapon in this showdown. "Let him out," he repeated and Dean could tell he was seriously considering shooting him.

Oh, come on! This guy could not be that good a friend.

"I don't know what you are," Sam continued, raising his arms and setting his face in determination and anger, "but let Brady go."

"Sammy," Dean groaned, throwing his arms out to the sides, "You don't _tell_ the monster you don't know what it is! You might has well wave around a neon sign screaming 'I don't know how to kill you!'"

Sam frowned at him, but the gun didn't waiver. His determination did, though: Dean could see it in his eyes. Sam wasn't a hundred percent sure Dean wasn't Dean. Even with his last comment, the kid was still sharp enough to know his brother wasn't the same guy he had been two days ago.

"Open the trunk. Now."

Dean leveled his brother with a sober, if slightly annoyed look. Reaching behind him, he turned the key and the trunk opened with a click. Brady pushed it the rest of the way open, sitting up with crocodile tears and a fantastic look of panic.

Fucking demons.

"S-Sam, please. Please, you're brother's crazy!"

There was blood pouring down the side of his face, courtesy of the underside of the trunk shutting on his stupidly perfect hair. Unfortunately, it added to the damsel in distress act he had going on. His hands were raised in a half placating, half begging pose, pleading to the younger brother to save him as he blinked blood out of his wide, traumatized eyes.

"Please," Dean scoffed, rolling his eyes at the drama act. "Sammy, he's a demon."

Sam jerked in surprise. His eyes narrowed, looking quickly between his (possibly fake) brother and his (now possibly possessed) best friend. The gun stayed trained on Dean, but the intent to actually use it seemed further off now.

"A- a what?" the faker stuttered in shock, looking between the two hunters. "I'm not a- are you insane?"

Dean's eyes never left his brother as he dumped the canister of holy water over his shoulder.

Sam went a few dozen shades whiter as Brady screamed and hissed and smoked, clawing at his steaming face. He bared his teeth at Dean, hissing like a wild animal. Sam's gun arm waivered, lowering almost to his waist before retraining it on the writhing demon.

"Dean?" he asked, voice weak and unsettled, begging for answers to his life being turned completely upside down. Dean stepped away from the trunk, coming closer to his brother. He kept the shotgun down and broadcasted his movements clearly, in case Sam still had any doubt as to what he was.

"Sorry, man. I didn't want you to know."

Sam screwed up his face in a tight, squinted look of hurt that Dean knew well. It was the expression Sammy wore each and every time he felt betrayed by his brother. "What?"

The words were breathless, and Dean battled with his instinct to look away.

"Is this why you came here?" Sam asked. His gun remained trained on Brady, but the anger was directed at his brother now. "The hunt in Jericho – Dad missing? Was that all just some excuse to get me out of Stanford so you could kill my _possessed_ best friend without having to tell me? What the hell, Dean!"

"That's not-" Dean cut off, shaking his head angrily. "Dad _is_ missing, but that has nothing to do with this! I didn't know in advance, okay? I just found out!"

Sam's anger drained away from him as he stared at his brother. He lowered the gun, knowing it wouldn't work for a demonic possession anyway. "How? How did you-"

Dean shrugged. "I gave him a beer laced with holy water. It's, uh, a trick I learned from dad. Wasn't expecting anything to come of it – I was just running all the normal tests."

Brady suddenly laughed, pulling their attention back to him. He was sitting, shoulders slumped, face red and splotchy from the water, ruse abandoned. "Bullshit. You were ready for me. I don't know how you knew, but you knew."

Dean narrowed his eyes at the demon. "Shut it."

Sam looked to his brother, full blown puppy dog eyes begging him to make the world make sense again. At least, that's what the big brother in Dean saw whenever Sammy stared at him like that.

"Later, Sammy."

Silence reigned in the clearing, as if the stupid crickets wanted to hear what happened next. Dean's finger twitched against the shotgun's trigger.

"It's Sam," the younger Winchester corrected calmly and Dean could see the change take over his brother. The way he tensed his forehead, smoothing away any wrinkles on his brow, screaming _'I know when you're lying to me.'_ The setof his shoulders that vowed, _'We're not done talking about this_.' The tick in his jaw when he was pissed as hell, but firmly resolved.

His little brother had just fallen into hunter mode, something that hadn't happened the first time around until after Jess's death.

Somehow, it felt like failure to Dean: a sucker punch to the gut. He didn't know why – Jess was still alive, and he was still hell bent on keeping it that way. But it felt like he was already behind the curve, too far to catch up. Like Sammy had already set his mind to hunting, just like the first time after finding his girlfriend roasted on the ceiling.

Which was ridiculous, because none of it had happened yet – they were _stopping_ it from happening – and all Sam had done was pull a face. Nothing had changed. They'd still kill Brady, Jess would be safe and Sam could go back to apple pie.

So Dean nodded his head, conceded to 'Sam' over 'Sammy' and in doing so apparently agreed that they'd talk about it later. A promise he would deal with equally later.

Sam turned back to Brady, all business now. Whatever he'd needed to do to tuck away the shock and betrayal, he'd done it. "How long?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, are you taking to me now?" Brady asked, revealing a mouth full of bloody teeth as he smiled. "I hadn't realized the _Lifetime_ moment had ended."

Sam didn't even blink. Brady sighed dramatically, "Come on, Sammy-boy. You already know the answer. Think _really_ hard."

The younger hunter's jaw clenched, the veins popping with the harsh treatment. "Sophomore year, Thanksgiving break."

Brady broke out in the widest smile yet. "Ah, the booze, bitches, and drugs. Those were the good days. Remember how much time you spent trying to get me back on the right track?" The demon laughed, a gurgling sound that must have hurt like hell with his ruined throat. "You were such a _good_ friend, Sam."

"Why?" he ground out, fist clenching, gun hand shaking. "That was two years ago! What the hell is your end game?"

Before Brady could answer, Sam stiffened and lost any color he'd regained. His breath when he finally released it shook. "Jess."

"Ding ding ding!"

Sam glanced at Dean briefly, his voice devastatingly quite when he talked. "He introduced me to Jess. A-after….After sophomore year." His hands were shaking at his sides. "Is….Is she? She's not. She can't be."

Brady's grin grew feral as he finished Sam's train of thought. "Of course she is-"

"She's not."

Both men looked at Dean, who'd answered so matter-of-factly you'd think they'd been talking about stock market stats. He glared at the demon briefly before nodding to his brother reassuringly. "I checked. She's human."

Which was a total lie, and now Dean was sort of wondering if he _should_ check, but was pretty sure he didn't need to. First of all, she'd be stuck on a devil-trapped rug back in the apartment right now (which, while amusing to picture, would likely not have gone unnoticed by the two hunters currently staying with her). Second, there was no way Future-Brady would have let that opportunity for back-stabbing bragging pass. He would have rubbed it in Sam's face that he'd fallen for a demon ( _again_ ). That she'd been one the whole time. That she'd never actually loved him.

No, he was just feeding off what Sam had given him.

The demon was watching Dean with narrowed, curious eyes. He met the stare head on. Sam was still reeling with relief that his girlfriend wasn't a lying denizen of Hell.

"Why would you introduce me to her?" he asked quietly at first, voice confused, before he rounded angrily on the demon. Sam wasn't stupid. On the contrary, Dean always thought he was a minor genius, especially when it came to Sherlocking the truth out of situations. He'd make a hell of a lawyer. "Why do any of this? What the hell are you playing at?"

Brady laughed, looking between the brothers. "So you don't know? You're out favorite, Sammy-boy. We've got big plans for you."

"Not anymore, you don't." Dean emptied the rest of the canteen over Brady's head and slammed the trunk shut amid the sound of sizzling skin and screaming. A sickening crack filled the air and the trunk bounced back open after failing to click shut. Brady was howling as he pulled four crooked, limp fingers against his chest.

"Dean!" Sam barked, taking a step towards them. "He's still in there! It's still Brady's body."

Oh. Right. Oops?

The hunter grimaced, shutting the trunk a tad more gently this time. In his defense, Future-Brady had been long dead by the time they ganked the son of a bitch (and even if he hadn't been, killing the man after a decade of possession was a freaking mercy). Besides, he hadn't _meant_ to close the trunk on his fingers. But he wasn't going to lose any sleep over it, either.

Dean bent down, scooping up the can of spray paint he'd dropped at the start of all this. As he straightened, Sam blocked him with his arm outstretched to the side. The older hunter quirked an eyebrow in question.

His younger brother held out a sliver knife that looked way too familiar. Dean reached for his hip where he kept his blade, only to find it missing. Sammy was still holding it out to him, a challenging look in his eye. Dean glanced down at the kid's gun, thankfully pointed at the ground, but with a firm finger resting on the trigger.

"Shouldn't have called you rusty," he quipped with a grin as he grabbed the knife. He rolled up one sleeve and pressed the blade to his arm, drawing a faint red line that swelled with blood. The drops of water on his shirt and skin, collateral from Brady's squirming, sealed the deal on him not being a demon. That and the silver were probably enough reassurance for his brother.

Sam relaxed fractionally, grip loosening on the gun. "Dean, _what_ is going on? And no more lies. He said you knew what he was – that you were ready for him. How? And what did he mean, _they've_ got plans for me?"

Dean pressed the can of spray paint into his brother's chest to avoid answering any of those questions that he really didn't have answers to. Damn it, this was supposed to be simple. Kill Brady, save Jess, keep Sam out of it.

Why the hell did Sam have to follow him?

 _Because life's a bitch, that's why_.

Of course it wouldn't just be easy. Why had he thought it would be? He was a Winchester. They didn't get _easy_.

"Look, we'll get answers, okay? But we still need to exorcise the son of a bitch, and we're not doing it in the friggin' Impala. So go paint a devils trap and let's get this done."

Sam looked ready to argue, but Dean leveled a serious stare. "Go. I'll explain later, alright?"

"Dean-" his brother's voice was a warning. He wouldn't take being put off again.

"I will, okay? Go!"

Sam gave a grim nod, but still didn't move. Dean watched him expectantly, finally raising his hands in a clear ' _What now?_ ' gesture. His brother's brow furled in that way that said he didn't understand something, but didn't want to admit it. Which was kind of fair in this situation, considering there was a metric shit ton he didn't know and Dean was kind of turning his life on end.

Finally, Sam mumbled, "What's a devils trap?"

 _Son of a bitch_. Seriously. How the hell had they lived long enough to make it to the end of the world?

Dean swiped the spray paint out of his brother's hand. He pointed at the ground with his free hand. "Stay."

He moved a good ten feet from the car to where the pine needles and loose dirt gave way to harder packed ground. Crouching, he began the large circle and five point star. Sam stayed by the trunk as instructed (and not pouting _at all_ about it), but craned his neck to try and catch the lines his brother was painting over the ground.

By the time he finished, Sam was standing next to the outer edge, memorizing the ancient symbols with the same fire in his eyes he got when handed a new puzzle.

"Dude." Dean threw his hands out as he straightened and caught sight of his brother. He gestured emphatically at the abandoned car.

Sam just shrugged and Dean dropped his arms, glaring. His brother's eyes were already back on the trap. "Does this really work?"

"What do you think's keeping him in the trunk?"

The younger hunter's eyes doubled in size. "You _spray painted_ the Impala?"

Dean pulled a bitchface of his own. Of course Sam would be incredulous this time. Little shit had been the one to blemish Baby's gorgeous finish first time around without so much as blinking. Nobody put Baby in a devil-trapped corner but Dean. "It's in the trunk, first of all. And second, it's an _addition_. It makes her even more badass."

Sam looked skeptical, shaking his head as they made their way back towards the car. "If it's painted on the trunk, how are we going to get him to that one?" he asked, nodding back the way they came. There was at least a ten foot difference, and the placement of trees limited their ability to back the Impala up to it. He may not be very familiar with demonic possession, but he was fairly sure the thing in Brady wouldn't need half that distance to overpower them.

"Just wait." Dean grinned. One advantage to being from the future was he knew _all_ the cool tricks. And this time he didn't have to own up to learning most of them from fucking Crowley.


	4. Season 1: Chapter 3

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Dean's still swearing. It's likely safe to say he'll be swearing for the rest of the foreseeable (and unforeseeable) future. Oh, and Jess is a pretty cool chick._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 3

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

With an unceremonious shove, Dean ripped the hood off of Brady as the demon stumbled into the devils trap. It wasn't so much a hood as it was an old white t-shirt he'd ripped up and tied back together. He'd drawn the devils trap with a sharpie while waiting at the bar. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't as nifty looking as the one Crowley had bagged him with, looking like a burlap sack he found in a re-enactment of _Children of the Corn_ , but his version was improvised. Which made it even more badass, in his opinion.

Brady managed to stay on his feet, letting out a low chuckle with his back to the two brothers. He titled his head to the sky and laughed. "Oh Dean," he turned around with a smile, "you're a lot smarter than we thought. When did that happen?"

"Bite me."

Sammy was watching him again, switching between him and his former best friend. The look in his eye was suspicious, but not of what Dean might be. He'd proven himself human enough for the hunter. No, Sam was sure his brother knew more than he was saying, and he'd get it out of him one way or another.

Damn it, why couldn't he have just stayed out of it.

 _Because he's a Winchester._

Another memory surfaced, of a week spent in a suit and tie, starving on rabbit food smoothies and hunting a crazy ass ghost of a long dead boss with one, Sam Wesson.

 _'Hunting is in your blood. It's what you are.'_

Friggin' Zachariah. And friggin' Time. Well screw them both. Sam wasn't going to be a hunter, if it killed Dean.

"You know, you're real lucky, Sammy." Brady was talking again, this time smiling gently – _kindly_ – at the younger of the two. The demon turned to Dean, tilting his head mockingly. "Maybe luckier than even your brother realizes. He spared you quite the nasty shock."

"What are you talking about?" Sam turned to his brother. "Dean, what's he mean?"

The older Winchester considered shutting the demon up: exorcising him before he could no doubt taunt and stab at his brother over what he had been about to do. But Sam wouldn't just let this go. It was cruel to let his little brother hear the truth from a demon, but maybe it would be better coming from something he could take his anger out on.

"I'm talking about that fine piece of ass you have waiting for you back at home."

Sam straightened, shoulders going rigid. His hands fisted involuntarily, shaking with fear and anger equally.

Brady showed his pearly whites. "And how I was going to pin her to the ceiling and burn her to a crisp."

The younger hunter when white. Brady laughed.

"That's right, Sammy-Boy. Just like mommy dearest."

Sam opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked desperately to Dean, searching for the voice of reason that said none of this was real. One look at his older brother and his world came crashing down.

"This- This is-"

Brady tilted his head back and howled with laughter. "Surprise! I'm the monster that killed your whore mother!"

"No, he isn't," Dean said at the same time.

The silence in the clearing would have been damn near comical if it was any other situation. Two sets of wide eyes turned to Dean, asking for answers he wasn't going to give either of them.

Brady was the first to recover. His eyes were narrow slits as he stared down the man who all their sources had said was the hothead of the two. The one who would react the most to everything he was saying.

"You think I didn't pin the bitch to the ceiling, Dean? You think I didn't _gut_ Mommy Winchester right above little Sammy's crib? I watched her _burn_ and I'm gonna do the same thing to Jess-"

Dean took a menacing step forward, cocking the shotgun. His hand twitched to wrap around an angel blade and kill this son of a bitch.

"The thing that killed our mom had yellow eyes. You gonna pull out those pale babies? Or are you gonna shut the hell up, cuz I know you don't got shit to show."

Brady's mouth slowly shut, a glare settling over his features. His eyes remained human, and Dean took it for the win it was.

He was beyond ready to waste this son of a bitch before he could run his mouth any more, but he needed to let it play out. No way Sam would ever let it go if he didn't learn all he could now. The only chance Dean had of getting his brother to drop this whole thing was if he felt it was over. Closure and all that crap.

"You're right," Brady's voice brought Dean back around.

The man was shrugging his shoulders, but his eyes had a glint of new strategy in them. Guess he was of the brainy persuasion of demon rather than the brawn. Probably had to be at least halfway intelligent to land an espionage gig watching over the future vessel of Lucifer himself.

Dean tightened his grip on his gun.

"I'm not the one who put the hit out on your mommy. Or Jess. But I'm still the one who's gonna light her up."

He directed his last words at Sam, who looked like he was half a step away from throwing himself into the devils trap and beating Brady with his bare hands. Dean reached out and gripped his shoulder. Sam flinched, but didn't pull away.

Dean turned to the demon. "Maybe that was the plan, but not anymore. You're going right back to Hell."

The answering grin would have put Hannibal Lecter to shame.

"You think this ends with me, Dean-O? Oh, no. My boss isn't going to stop. Go ahead, send me back. It won't save her, and it won't save you." He turned his burning eyes to Sam. "My kind is never going to stop. Jess is going to burn. She'll be dead by the end of the weak and it's going to be all your fault, Sammy!"

Dean grabbed his brother as he let out an animalistic roar and charged the circle. He threw him back, yelling to back off – that playing to his game wouldn't do anything but give him the satisfaction. Not to mention possibly break the trap and set him free.

Sam stalked off, fuming. He paced back and forth by the impala, fighting to cool off and clearly losing if the menacing glares he sent their way every thirty seconds were any indication.

Dean looked back at Brady. The demon just stood, smirking like the fucking asshole he was. The hunter looked away, focusing his anger and frustration at an object he was less likely to pummel into the ground.

Son of a bitch. _Son of a bitch!_

He honestly hadn't thought it. Kill Brady, save Jess. That had been the equation and this was his solution. Simple, two step problem. Only Azazel had ordered Jess killed to get Sam back into hunting. He wouldn't stop until his 'favorite' had the motivation needed to follow a road of blood and death. Right now, Jess was still their best bet at getting Sam on the path to become a cold, revenge-filled hunter.

She would never be safe unless he took that road.

Why hadn't he realized it? Why had he thought anything would be this damn simple? It was the voice in the back of his head that did it, that pushed him over the edge. It whispered, _'Well, at least you won't be alone anymore. Sammy'll be right back by your side. Straight to the end of the world_.'

It was the last straw on his already precariously balanced emotional state.

Dean let out a primal scream and slammed the butt of his shotgun into the nearest tree. He did it again and again and again, but nothing got better.

"Dean! Dean, stop!" A giant's hand gripped the barrel of the gun: another pressed against his chest. His brother's face swam into view, concerned and angry and still so fucking devastated.

Dean shoved away from him, giving up the shotgun to his brother's tense grip and raising his hands in a show of calm. "Okay," he muttered. "Okay."

He gave himself a second. Told himself to get it back under control. He could lose it later, right now they had a job to do. Dean straightened his jacket and stalked back towards the grinning son of a bitch. Sam followed.

"Get whatever you want out of him." He stopped at the edge of the circle, leveling the demon with his most intimidating glare. It was a look shaped in the depths of Hell. It made even demons take a step back. "We're sending this son of a bitch back where he came from."

Sam spared a second to watch his brother, a dark man he wasn't entirely sure he recognized, before focusing his attention solely on the thing sitting in his best friend's body.

Brady didn't say much. At least nothing of consequence. He spouted shit about having plans for Sammy, that he was their favorite, that Jess would never be safe again. He never shut up, actually, but he didn't say anything either.

Dean kept half an ear out for lies, setting them straight when he could without giving too much away. There were surprisingly few.

He doubted the low-level minion even knew the real play at this point. Nothing came up alluding to Lucifer or Lilith. Brady kept Azazel's name to himself, always calling him Boss, and anything else he knew of any importance was danced around with the dexterity of an experienced liar.

Dean knew he could have gotten it out of him. Even without Ruby's knife or an angel blade, he could have made the demon sing. He had a weapon time couldn't take away from him. But he was pretty sure he should keep that whole 'I can torture information out of just about anyone or thing' to himself this time around.

Sam was already looking at him like he was considering having him institutionalized. No need to give the kid more fuel.

Eventually, frustrated, Sam called it. His shoulders were tense, his hands still fisted and shaking, but his face was stone when he started for the car to get his laptop and search for an exorcism. Dean couldn't help it. He stopped his brother with a pat to the chest, winked at the giant, and started reciting the Latin he knew by heart.

The shock on Sam's face was totally worth it.

The demon inhabiting Brady went kicking and screaming, but eventually collapsed in a choking, hacking explosion of black smoke. The plume was dragged into the ground and sent, presumably, back to the pits of Hell.

Good fucking riddance.

The kid that was actually Brady was, shockingly, still alive. With a few broken fingers, a bit of skull trauma, and probably screwed in the head seven ways from Sunday, but alive.

"We should get him to a hospital," Sam said quietly, carrying the unconscious body back to the Impala.

Dean just nodded, not asking what story they were going to give. He knew this couldn't be one of their drop and runs, like they usually did with civilians. This was Sam's friend. He listened with half an ear as Sam told the ER nurses of Brady's past drug abuse, of how he found him half alive on campus, suspecting a relapse and maybe a mugging gone bad. He waited until his brother sunk into the hard, plastic chairs in the waiting room to say anything at all.

"Sam, we gotta go."

The kid looked up at him with those puppy dog eyes and Dean hated himself a little more. "What?" He looked around at the other friends and family in states of distress, all waiting to hear about a loved one. "We can't just leave."

Yeah, it would be suspicious as hell, not that that's what Sam meant. But they didn't have the time or luxury to stick around.

"Sam."

His brother met his gaze again and swallowed as the reality of what had happened set it.

"I…We can't stay here, can we?"

Dean knew he wasn't talking about the hospital. He shook his head. "That demon will have gotten word to Yellow Eyes by now. Or will soon."

Sam was up in the blink of an eye. "Jess."

Dean put a comforting hand to his brother's chest. "Is in a demon proofed house at the moment. I, uh, made some additions."

Sam looked relieved, but only so much. She may have been safe, but it was momentary. They would still have to leave. He didn't know where they would go. Where could they run to that demons couldn't follow? His mind flew through every place and dozens of plans, but he didn't have the answers, and that scared him to his core.

The two waited until the nurses at the front desk were looking away, and then took off. Dean kept it under the speed limit, but just barely as they headed back to the apartment.

Sam sat in the front seat of the Impala and tried to figure out what the hell he would tell Jess to convince her to leave town with them without freaking her completely out. He wasn't coming up with much, and panic was twisting his chest into knots.

As they hit a red light that Dean was sorely tempted to run, Sam quietly said, "She's never going to be safe, Dean. We can't- we can't run forever."

Dean rapped his knuckles on the steering wheel impatiently. "We'll take her to Bobby's. She'll be safe in the panic room. And we'll go from there."

Sam's brow furled and he finally looked at his brother. "Bobby has a panic room?"

God damn crap on a cracker. Dean ran a hand down his face. He was going to make a list of what they did and didn't know in 2005. First thing, soon as they were at Bobby's. That's what he was gonna do. Make a god damn list.

Instead, he forced a smirk onto his face and answered cockily, "Yeah, Sammy, Bobby has a panic room. See what happens when you run off to get an education? You miss learning the good stuff."

"Jerk," Sam said on impulse, rolling his eyes. "And it's Sam."

"Right. Sam." Dean nodded. The light turned green and he hit the gas. "Bitch."

-o-o-o-

Jess took it pretty well. At least, as well as a civilian with no clue as to what was going on could take her boyfriend coming home in a half panic, packing their bags, and insisting they had to leave. The usual questions came up: _Does this have something to do with your father? Your brother? Sam, what is going on? What aren't you telling me?_

For Sam's part, it was clear he didn't know what to tell her, so he didn't tell her anything. He said they were in danger, that they needed to leave, and he'd explain on the way.

All in all, they were in and out in under forty-five minutes. Dean kept guard at the front door ( _"Is that- is that a_ _ **shotgun**_ _? Sam, why does your brother have a gun!")_ and escorted the two with their bags back to the Impala. Nothing came out of the shadows after them. He kept a careful eye on the rear view mirror for the first three hours of their drive.

Either Azazel had gotten slow, or he was waiting this out to see what Sam's play would be.

The younger Winchester sat in the front seat, a flask of holy water in the side door and a sawed-off under his feet. Despite the urge to keep it in his lap, ready at a moment's notice, there was no need to freak Jess out more by calling attention to it.

Jess was in the backseat, body language screaming 'freaked out' but facial expression surprisingly controlled. Her eyes kept darting between her boyfriend, his legs that were stretched out over a _gun_ (yes, she had noticed that little fun fact, _thank you very much_ ), and his brother.

She knew Sam had issues with his family, especially the family business. She had always thought he had a controlling father, possibly abusive, who couldn't let his son live his own life. Privately, she'd been proud of him for getting away from that, even if she hadn't known him back when he'd made that choice. Now, staring at the duel hardened expressions of both brothers and the freaking _guns_ within reach of both, she was wondering just how off base she'd been.

Sam had come home in a surprisingly somber variety of panic and Dean had been on them the entire time like a professional bodyguard.

Just what the hell was his family business?

"Sam," she began softly, worriedly. She glanced at Dean – the wild card in all of this. "I think you need to explain everything to me. Right now."

Her boyfriend looked over his shoulder at her. He looked wrecked. She knew this man – she _loved_ this man. And whatever was happening was hurting him. But telling her was hurting him more.

"Jess, I- I can't," he said, keeping her gaze. His brown eyes were wide, begging her to believe him. To forgive him.

"Sam."

Dean's voice called both their attentions. There was a silent conversation there Jess didn't understand, try as she might. But Sam obviously spoke the language.

"Dean, no." He shook his head and leaned towards his brother, lowering his voice as if she _wasn't_ less than a foot away and hearing every word. "Are you kidding me? Family rule number one: we do what we do and we shut up about it!"

Oh yeah. This was boding _so well_.

"What are you going to do?" Dean asked mockingly. "You going to lock her in the panic room without an explanation? Sammy, it's in the basement. It looks like a friggin' war bunker out of a horror movie. She's going to think we're serial killers."

And there it was. She had been trying really, _really_ hard to stay away from that particular train of thought. Not that Dean, with his scary glares, militaristic guarding, and fucking shotgun, had been much help in that department.

"I am right here, you know!" she practically yelled. And if her voice went a few octaves higher than she intended and possibly edged towards the screechy levels of hysteria, well, they could both just fuck off about it.

"Jess." He was looking at her again, puppy eyes ranked up to full blown ten.

"A demon's coming for you."

"Dean!"

"It's after you to get to Sam."

"Excuse me?"

Her boyfriend looked ready to punch his brother, who gave him a quick 'tough luck' glare. "You can't hide it forever, Sam. Eventually you get to the point where the 'truth is out there' spiel is the only option left."

Sam gritted his teeth. "We weren't there yet."

The leather of the steering wheel creaked under Dean's knuckles. He didn't look at his brother again, instead checking the rearview mirror before re-focusing on the road. "Yeah, well, we will be soon enough."

Sam glanced in the side mirror, but didn't see anything behind them. Not even distant headlights of another car on the road. His finger itched for the shotgun on the floor, but he resisted. It would do more harm than good.

"Somebody want to fill me in?" Jess was practically shaking in the back seat, but it wasn't from fear. "A _demon_? Please tell me that's some screwed up metaphor for something."

Sam let out a heartbreaking sigh and rubbed his forehead. "It isn't." He said it with so much defeat in his voice, Jess had half a mind to believe him on the spot.

"Okay," she worked through slowly, trying to reason out how else the word 'demon' could apply. "Is this, like- Is this some sort of….criminal? Like a hitman? Sam, is your family- are you part of the mafia?"

She'd heard of stranger things, and 'the Demon' was something she could see the mob naming one of their boogiemen. Of course, she wasn't well-read on the subject outside of the occasional movie night, so 1950's New York was pretty much all that came to mind. Try as she might, Jess couldn't picture Sam coming from that sort of environment.

Maybe an ex-con? Or a serial killer. Maybe Sam's family had been put into Witness Protection. His mom had died when he was a baby. Maybe she'd been murdered and his dad and brother had testified? It would explain the current situation, but not so much his hatred of the family business.

A bark of laughter from Dean and a silencing glare from Sam ended her wild speculation.

"We're not in the mafia, Jess."

"We're hunters." Her boyfriend looked once more ready to strangle his brother, who shrugged. "We chase down supernatural badasses that kill humans."

Silence reigned in the Impala. Jess was staring at Dean. Dean was staring at the open road. Sam was trying to disappear into his seat. She had no idea how to respond.

"Sam?" The whisper was quiet. Questioning. Praying. He flinched, but ultimately gave a defeated sigh.

"It's true."

"But…" She gripped the back of his seat. "That- That stuff isn't real. Sam, you have to know that stuff isn't real."

Suddenly the conversation they'd had a few nights ago about Halloween took on an entirely new perspective.

Sam sunk into his seat and closed his eyes. He wondered miserably if this was the last time he'd talk to Jess as the man she loved, and not the psychotic mental patient with severe psychosis who she had run away from, screaming.

"Sam, you got your ID on you?"

The question, such a non-sequitur to the current tension in the car, startled him out of his misery. "What?"

"An ID. Do you have one on you?"

Sam crinkled his nose in confusion. Dean would have called him out on the bitchface in any other situation. "Yeah. Why?"

The impala jerked to the left as Dean hit the brakes, pulling off the highway to make a sharp turn down a dirt side road. Sam grabbed at the dash to steady himself. Behind him, Jess's fingers dug into the edges of his seat.

"Dean?"

His brother didn't answer, just continued down the dirt road through fields and farmland. They passed a picturesque farmhouse, white curtains framing every window, backlit with warm yellow light. They drove for another ten minutes, with Jess in the backseat praying she wasn't about to find out her boyfriend was a reluctant serial killer, egged on by the anti-religious delusions of his brother. Or any variation of that nightmare.

Dean stopped the car as they came to an intersection of another road. He climbed out and headed for the trunk. Jess didn't dare leave the safety of the backseat. Sam tried to send her a reassuring look (it really didn't work) before climbing out of the Impala after his brother.

"Dean, what are we doing here?"

He caught the spray paint when it was thrown at him. Dean shut the trunk, shaking a can of his own as he rounded the back of the car. In his other hand was a cigar box.

"We're gonna summon a crossroads demon."


	5. Season 1: Chapter 4

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** The boys are summoning demons, Bobby is being awesome, and Lucifer is having tea. _

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 4

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam was left speechless as Dean walked past him to the center of the intersection. His brother set down the cigar box and began painting the same large, five-pointed star and symbols as he had only hours ago in the woods outside Palo Alto.

"We're- We're going to _what?_ " Sam followed, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him up when he didn't answer. "What the hell, Dean?"

"You know another way to prove it to her, Sammy?" He gestured to the car, where Jess was slowly, warily climbing out. "A crossroads demon is the easiest to summon."

And possibly the stupidest, but you couldn't win 'em all, right?

Jess came to the edge of the nearest star point, staring down at it worriedly. Absently, she crossed her arms, rubbing her bare skin and trying to ignore the way her hands shook. If anyone asked, she would have said it was because of the cold.

Sam went through several different responses, throwing them all out when he couldn't seem to form the words correctly. Finally, he threw his arms out to his sides. "Are you insane?"

His brother didn't bother answering him. He just kept painting. Sam ran his free hand through his hair, tugging at the roots fiercely. Here they were, out in the middle of nowhere, about to summon a demon to show his girlfriend – the woman he wanted to marry – that monsters were real. How had this gone downhill so fast?

"How do you even know how to summon one, man?"

Dean finally stopped what he was doing and straightened up with a look that said he was approaching his own limit of crap he could handle in one day. "Come off it, Sammy- _Sam_. You were gone for four years. Well, I learned shit too. Now will you paint the damn circle?"

The younger Winchester dropped his gaze. His brother bent back over, finishing off the tail end of a symbol. Sam glanced at Jess, who was staring at him, pleading with him to see how crazy this was. He looked away. She hesitantly retreated to the car.

Maybe this was the easiest way to prove they weren't crazy. But he'd wanted to keep all of this from her, and now he was going to put her right in front of it. Put a demon in front of her. A being of pure evil – a thing that had vowed to kill her – and they were going to summon one. Just to prove a point. This was crazy.

Sam glanced at his brother. Dean was right: he had been gone for four years. And he'd gotten rusty. His best friend had been possessed right under his nose, and he hadn't noticed. Hadn't even suspected. And what Brady had said. Sam took a shaky breath.

The way he had described it…

It was just like his dreams. _Just_ like them. He'd been having those dreams for days. Dreams of Jess, on the ceiling. Of… Of exactly what Brady had described. Said he would do to her. And he'd _ignored_ them. If it wasn't for Dean, he would have _let_ his best friend murder the love of his life.

He felt sick.

Not just rusty. Downright pathetic. Dad would beat the crap out of him if he could see him now.

But Dean… Dean knew what he was doing. Clearly, he and dad had been dealing with demons lately. He knew what was going on. He knew what to do.

Sam repeated it to himself like a mantra as he bent down and started to draw a circle to complete the pentagram.

When they finished the devils trap, Sam grabbed the holy water and his wallet out of the car, glancing hesitantly at Jess. She'd dug a jacket out of her hastily packed go-bag and wrapped herself in it like a security blanket. Right now, the car and that jacket were her comfort zone. They were the only sense of safety, however false, that she had out there in the middle of nowhere, watching her boyfriend and his brother paint occult symbols in the dirt.

Dean was digging a hole in the center of the pentagram when Sam jogged back over to him. He held out the cigar box, lifting the lid for Sam to slide his California issued license into. The older hunter shut the box pretty quickly, but not before his brother caught sight of dirt, some small dried flowers, and what he was pretty sure was an animal bone.

Wonderful. At least Jess hadn't seen the contents. That wouldn't freak her out _at all_.

Dean placed the box into the small hole and quickly covered it back up, burying any evidence that it was there.

"Okay," he muttered, retreating out of the circle with Sam. The two brothers walked back over to the Impala, where Dean dug into his front pocket and pulled out two necklaces. Small, coin-like charms dangled from the black cord.

"Put these on." He handed one to each of them. Sam did so immediately, without question, while Jess ran her thumb over the little sun symbol raised out of cheap metal. It looked like some two-cent Hollywood prop or chink jewelry you might find at a street fair.

No way was she feeding Dean's delusions.

"Jess." Sam nudged gently, taking the charm from her and sliding it over her head. "Trust me, okay?"

She really, really wanted to. But she wasn't crazy.

Dean was watching the center of the intersection with a hard, waiting stare. Sam adopted a similar stance and Jess, with no other option and an increasing sense of dread, turned her gaze to it as well.

When a woman in red appeared out of nowhere, Jess reeled. Sam was immediately there, in front of her, shielding her, wrapping his presence around her like a blanket without ever touching her. She gripped his arm and knew she was leaving bruises with her fingertips.

Her brain short-circuited. The woman – a brunette with perfectly curled hair, done up to the nines in a deep red cocktail dress that fit all her curves sinfully well – must have come out of the fields. Only, it wasn't like they were surrounded by fucking corn. It was all low-laying crop that someone her size, petite as she was, would have had to lie down in. And neither her dress nor her smooth, dark skin had a fleck of dirt present.

Jess couldn't look away. She'd blinked once and the woman had appeared. What would happen if she did it again? Her grip tightened around Sam's bicep and he reached back with his other hand to grip hers. She clung to it and every reassuring squeeze he sent her way like a lifeline.

Was she losing it? Had they somehow drugged her and this was all a hallucination? Sam wouldn't do that to her. Hypnosis, maybe? That would explain the woman coming out of nowhere. Maybe Dean did it with the coin necklace. Like those old time cartoons, swinging pendulum crap and all that.

 _Yeah, that's a lot closer to the 'sane' end of the spectrum than a demon. Let's go with that._

The woman in the red dress made a 'tsk' sound with her tongue, grinning like the cat that caught the canary. She clasped her hands in front of her, swaying sensually and oozing sex appeal. "Sam Winchester."

The woman's eyes were locked on her boyfriend and Jess finally had to look away or risk insanity. Her eyes. Her eyes were glowing _red_. Hypnosis didn't include hallucination.

If this was some sort of bad trip, she wanted it to end _right now_.

The woman walked towards them. Jess whimpered and Sam stepped fully in front of her.

Dean cocked his shotgun and the woman suddenly stopped, red eyes widening. "What the hell is this?"

Jess, unable to ignore this horrible delusion, looked back up. The woman was frowning at her feet, set right at the edge of the circle of paint. Her red gaze suddenly vanished, leaving dark brown pupils glaring at the trio with a murderous intent Jess had never seen in another human being. She didn't move any closer.

"Insurance." It was Dean who answered, unfazed. He took a step forward and threw something at the woman in red. She screamed as steam rose from her skin and she stumbled back, away from the spray of water.

Jess looked down at the metal canister in Dean's hand. Sam held an identical container.

The woman hissed and bared her teeth like a wild animal. Her skin was red and blisters were forming, as if the water had been boiling. Jess looked at the uncapped canister again. No steam rose from the metal opening. She looked back at the poor woman's ruined face and shuddered at the inhuman rage there.

Demon was sounding more and more probable.

"You summoned _me!_ " she screeched, fisting her hands at her sides and stomping a high-heeled foot. Jess wondered if they'd broken some unspoken rule about summoning things. It certainly sounded like they had.

"Yup," Dean answered. He gave a grin that had no humor in it, and Jess wondered what had happened to the man who had obnoxiously commented on her smurf sleepwear. "And now we're gonna send you back to hell."

He began to speak, the words foreign but vaguely familiar. Jess's mind involuntarily supplied scenes from all those horror movies about possession and hauntings and demons that she'd watched as a teen. She'd loved them – loved scaring herself and curling up next to a friend or a boy or burrowing under blankets to peak through slatted fingers. She hadn't seen one in a while now – not since she'd met a boy who hated Halloween and monster movies with the kind of humorless self-deprecation of one who'd been personally offended by it.

She could kind of understand why now.

The woman screamed and wreathed and clutched at her choking throat. She fell to her knees, heaving up black, billowing smoke that defied gravity. It moved – _slithered_ – as if alive. It writhed and wretched as it soaked into the ground. Soon enough, there was nothing left but the unmoving body of a woman in the center of a crossroads and a pagan circle.

Jess was trembling by the time Sam turned around and gathered her into his arms.

-o-o-o-

Overall, Dean thought Sam's girlfriend handled it like a champ. There was some shaking, and some denial, and she was probably a couple shades whiter than was healthy. But there was no screaming or wailing, no tears, and no running for her life or calling the cops. After dropping the still alive woman off at the farmhouse (and luckily Jess was too out of it to complain about the game of ding-dong-ditch-the-unconscious-woman-on-your-porch), she sat silently in the backseat as they continued on towards Bobby.

At least the woman had lived. Dean didn't really want to find out how well Jess took burying a body in the middle of nowhere on top of everything else.

Sam tried to climb into the back seat with her, probably intent to comfort her with his puppy-dog eyes and Sasquatch hugs. But she shook her head and closed the car door. His brother wrestled the hurt look quickly off his face and climbed into the front seat. Dean didn't say a word.

An hour into the drive, Jess released a shaky breath (the first sound she'd made since, well, let's call it the _incident)_ and asked, "That….wasn't a bad acid trip or something. Was it."

It hadn't been a question, but Sam quietly answered anyway, "No. It wasn't."

She took in a deep breath. Dean met her eyes briefly in the rear view mirror. They steeled as she let the air slowly back out through pursed lips. "Okay."

"Okay?" he asked, arching an eyebrow at her.

She nodded and turned away, looking out the window. "Okay."

"Huh." Dean glanced at Sam, who gave a helpless little shrug before turning partially around in his seat to look at her. Dean looked over at the movement and frowned. "Damn it, Sammy. Seatbelt."

His brother ignored him. "Are you okay?"

Jess met his eyes, and he could see she was still shaken (who wouldn't be) but she gave a pretty firm nod. When she spoke, her voice was quiet but steady. "Put your seatbelt on."

He stared at her for a minute longer before he shared a small, sad smile. He settled back in his seat and did as she asked.

-o-o-o-

Two hours out of Sioux Falls, the sun started to rise once more and Dean decided it was safe to call Bobby to give him some heads up they were coming.

"This better be life or death, otherwise yer dead."

Well. Sort of safe.

The gruff voice was so familiar and so damn missed that Dean choked on his own breath, and then his lungs and his tongue and his throat, just for good measure. Tears welled in his eyes before he could stop them and he valiantly blinked them out of existence.

"Uh," Dean cleared his throat and tried to chuckle, but that, too, got caught. He pushed through it anyway, sort of sobbing out a humorless laugh. Awesome start. "Heya, Bobby."

There was a pause at the other end of the line. Dean wasn't that surprised about it, given the last time he'd seen Bobby in this timeline, but it still hurt like hell. The kid in him wanted to scream at his dead father figure ( _Not dead, Dean_. _Not yet_. _No, not_ _ **ever**_ ) to say something. To prove he was still there and this wasn't all some cruel dream of a lonely, broken man.

"Dean?" He could hear Bobby's bed creak as the man sat up. "Dean Winchester. What the hell, boy."

"Sorry," he choked out and fought back a second wave of waterworks. Damn it, no chick-flick moments. "I know it's early."

"Yer damn right it's early. What the hell you calling me for at-" there was a pause and more creaking- "seven in the friggin' morning? Whatever this is couldn't wait?"

"Not unless you want houseguests still in your PJs," he joked back, and that's right – joking made this easier. Made him smile, because it was _so damn good_ to hear Bobby's gruff voice again. Now all he was missing was the trademark 'idjit.'

"What? Yer coming here?" Bobby was up now and Dean heard him grabbing the shotgun he kept at the foot of the nightstand. "Something on yer tail?"

"Maybe, Bobby. We need you to prep the panic room."

There was silence on the other line and Dean could picture the old man blinking, stunned, before staring down at his phone like it was the offender.

Finally there was a grunt. "How you know about that?"

"Please, I've been all over your house. Like you could keep something that cool a secret." Dean looked out the driver window, pulling a grimace and hoping like hell the man would take the lie.

The silence was suspicious. The "uh-huh" even more so. But Bobby didn't press him; just asked when they'd be getting there and who all was 'they.' The surprise at Sam being one of the incoming party was only outdone by the presence of his civilian girlfriend.

"Damn, son. What kinda crap did you step in?"

The older Winchester swallowed the lump in his throat by pure force of will. "Oh, you know me, Bobby. Only the best kind."

There was a huff on the other line. "Idjit."

There it was. Dean grinned like it was Christmas and if he was blinking back tears again, everyone could shut the hell up. "See you in two hours, Bobby."

The line disconnecting was his only reply, and it made him grin wider.

-o-o-o-

Jess looked up at the old junkyard house as she closed the door to the Impala. Not that there was much to look at. The brothers were really going all out with this whole 'let's make sure very place we go could double as the set of a horror movie.' At least they'd arrived in daylight.

"So. Who is this guy again?" She glanced to her right, where a giant Rottweiler was chilling on the hood of a blue pick-up turned tow-truck that had seen better days. The dog turned sad, droopy eyes towards them, heaved a sigh, and went back to napping in the sun. _Hell of a guard dog, that one_ , she thought.

Dean was grabbing duffel bags out of the trunk, tossing her and Sam's stuff to his brother. It was the younger of the two who answered, interrupted the first time around with an 'oof' as he caught his go-bag, thrown unnecessarily hard by his dick brother.

"He's… like our uncle. Sort of."

"He's a hunter. One of the best," Dean cut to the chase, shutting the trunk. He gave her a cheeky smile. "Dad used to dump us here as kids when we were too young to fight."

Sam leveled an annoyed look at him, but there was something else in there too: remnants of that stare he'd been giving him since Dean had woken up ten years in the past.

"What? I thought we agreed no pulling punches with her."

"No, _you_ agreed. There are other ways to say it without making us sound like…like-"

"Like we had a crap father who raised us as soldiers?"

Yup. There was that look again.

Jess came between them, a hand on either of their shoulders. "Still right here, you know." She patted each of them twice before pushing through the brothers and marching up to Bobby's porch. She shouldered her bag and knocked on the screen door.

Dean raised his eyebrows before turning to his brother. Sam looked equal parts constipated and head over heels in love. Dean smirked. "I like her."

It turned out the old hunter could be surprisingly charming when he wanted to be (when Ellen immediately came to mind, Dean dropped the thought faster than you can say parental sex, because _ew.)_ By the time the brothers carried their stuff into the house, double checked the wards, salt lines, and devils traps (God, did Dean love the paranoid old hunter), Bobby had Jess more at ease in his stuffy, dusty, book-lined house than she had been with either of the Winchesters since this whole thing started.

Sam tried not to let that hurt, and Dean tried not to laugh at his brother's award-winning impersonation of a kicked puppy.

They settled in the kitchen, Bobby leaning against the doorframe and the two brothers taking seats at the rickety table next to Jess. She was drinking a beer and digging into a freshly popped bag of popcorn.

"It's nine in the morning, Jess."

"I'm sorry, did you just have your entire world, belief system, and sanity brought into question overnight?"

Sam gave her such a hurt look that she stood up, got a second beer, popped the top on the edge of the counter, and handed it over. Sam accepted it with sagging shoulders. She offered him the open popcorn bag.

Dean was in fucking love. His brother needed to marry this girl _yesterday_.

While the sasquatch munched on some kernels and Dean was digging himself a handful as well, Bobby watched the surreal scene with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation. "If y'all are done gettin' comfy?"

Dean tried to talk through his mouth full of popcorn. Jess made a disgusted sound and Sam elbowed him in the arm. He had the decency to look guilty, close his mouth and resume chewing. Sam took over.

"Thanks for having us, Bobby."

"You wanna give me a little more info on why ya needed me to? Or what's chasing you boys?"

"Boy and girl, actually," Dean corrected as he swallowed heavily, stealing a swig of Sam's beer to wash down the ridiculously sized mouthful. He nodded his head at his annoyed brother and repulsed girlfriend. "Don't think the demons care much about me."

The silent ' _yet'_ was not so silent, even to an audience that had no idea what was coming.

"Demons?" Bobby had straightened, pushing off the doorframe. "You got demons on yer tail? As in _more than one_?"

He looked between the two brothers, both of whom seemed sheepishly unable to make eye contact. Sam was wrecked, which Bobby supposed was on point. As far as he'd known, the kid had run away to college and gotten out of the life. If that had changed before all this, he would have heard about it. Which meant whatever shit they were knee-deep in had found him at school.

Dean avoided his gaze for completely different reasons. The old man knew him almost as well as Sammy did. And that didn't bode well for pulling off his whole 'nothing about me is different, nope, I'm not from the future or anything' gig. He'd pretty much blown it by hugging the man too long and too tightly when they'd first entered the house. And he definitely hadn't fled immediately afterward to hide the friggin' waterworks.

Were there allergies in November? There must be. No other reason his eyes kept watering all the damn time.

Bobby's eyes narrowed at them. "Alright. Spill it. Now."

They did. Dean let his brother do most of the talking. Sam seemed a lot less likely to accidentally slip up with information he wasn't supposed to know because he wasn't from the friggin' future. Dean considered that pretty solid reasoning to stay out of the story as much as possible. He added bits here and there, mostly so Bobby wouldn't get suspicious at his silence. Though, from the occasional looks he was getting, it wasn't working.

"Then we headed here," Sam concluded, looking over at Jess, who was hearing some of this for the first time. Her eyes were wide and she'd certainly had an interruption or two of her own when she'd learned that _Brady_ had been a demon. Oh, yeah, and that they'd left him alone at the hospital recovering from two years of bodily possession.

Now she reached over and clasped Sam's hand, giving him a shaky smile. She was trying, despite all of it. Sam wanted to give that hand a grateful, loving, needy kiss, but decided to wait till they were alone. Dean had been waggling eyebrows like clockwork every hour since this all started. He really didn't need more fuel.

Bobby's eyes predictably turned to the older Winchester now that Sam had finished the story, including their little the-truth-is-out-there-and-we-can-prove-it stunt. Dean flinched instinctually.

"You summoned a _crossroads demon_?" The outrage in that sentence was worse than a disappointed parent and the kid shied away. "What were you thinking?"

He shrugged, standing up in a defensive push and heading for the fridge to get away from the man he considered more of a father than his own. A man who had, until yesterday, been dead, and was now ramping up for a lecture. It was too much to face without getting both choked up and pissed off and damn it, he was not going to fucking cry in Bobby's kitchen and blow this whole thing before he had fixed any of it.

Grabbing a beer, he spent a ridiculously long minute opening it, wasted a few more seconds taking an extended gulp, then finally turned around to face the music. "We had to prove it to her somehow."

"And summoning a _demon_ was the first thing that came to mind, huh?" Bobby looked at the young hunter incredulously. Something wasn't adding up and he was determined to figure out what that was. "Why don't you just invite the damn devil over for tea next time!"

The bottle of beer shattered in Dean's hand, spilling foam and alcohol across the kitchen floor.

"Dean!" Sam was up and at his brother's side in seconds. He swiped a kitchen towel and pressed it into Dean's bleeding hand. The older of the two was ashen white. Bobby didn't miss the shaking in his hands as his brother cleared his palm of glass chunks and Jess fetched paper towels off the counter.

The injured hunter came back from whatever had gripped him, noticing the minor cuts as if for the first time.

"Shit! Sorry. I….Shit," Dean was rambling as he waved his brother off and grabbed the towel for himself, wrapping his hand. Bobby's eyes narrowed at the delay, which seemed dangerously like shock.

Something was up. Bobby had never seen Dean so jittery – so pent up. Boy was wound tighter than a mousetrap, and seemed just as ready to snap on a hair-pin trigger. And breaking a bottle with his bare hand? Bobby's eyes involuntarily glanced at the two remaining drinks on the table. That was one hell of a grip. Or one hell of a jerk reaction.

The question was, what had set it off?

Sam crouched on the ground, helping Jess clean up the spilt liquid and glass with paper towels and what kitchen cloths they had at hand. Dean backed out of the way, still a few shades paler than he should be. He rubbed at his chest with his uninjured hand, watching his brother clean up his most recent shit-show.

"You alright, son?" Bobby asked softly, treading carefully. He had no idea what had triggered him, but Dean was definitely not firing on all cylinders.

The older Winchester gave an absent nod. "Fine. Sorry. I-" He shook his head to clear it. "I haven't slept much the last couple days. I'm just on edge."

It wasn't a lie. He was on day three of no sleep, and while he'd gone on less for longer and in an older body to boot, it wasn't like he'd been in a stable place to begin with these last few days.

Adding Bobby to the mix had been rough enough. Now he couldn't shake the image of Cas's face, horridly contorted by Lucifer's smiling malice. The fucker would probably love a damn tea party.

He wanted to throw up.

Bobby nodded in understanding, but still watched the hunter cautiously. Dean helped finish cleaning up the beer and Sam suggested maybe they call it for now. His brother obviously needed some sleep, and he was fairly certain he owed Jess some alone time and no shortage of overdue answers.

Their host gruffly agreed, saying the panic room was prepped and the couple could have their talk down there. His house was warded seven ways to Sunday, but that was still the safest place they could be.

The two headed downstairs with their bags. Dean collapsed on the achingly familiar couch in the study, towel still wrapped around his hand. Internally, he weighed the option of the bedroom upstairs with its sagging twin mattresses and privacy versus the couch that still bore sharpie stains from one of their stayovers during Sammy's Picasso phase. Ultimately, he chose the couch. He'd deal with the backlash of waking up screaming from a nightmare if it meant he'd be ready to fight should demons figure out where they were.

He chose to ignore the other reason: not wanting to let Bobby out of his sight just yet. He was too tired to beat back the deep ache at the thought of leaving the old hunter, even if it was just to head upstairs.

Bobby settled at his desk with a stack of books on demons. Dean pretended he didn't feel the hunter's eyes on him every few minutes and instead focused on slowing his breathing. The scent of old spice and the turning of worn pages was a painfully missed lullaby. He prayed to absolutely no one he believed in that he wouldn't dream and fell asleep with his hand spread over his heart.


	6. Season 1: Chapter 5

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Dean gets his dream angel on, Sam's giving everyone all the answers, and Bobby's a bit skeptical. (we're still swearing)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 5

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

He was dreaming.

He'd had this dream so many times now that it was his first thought to recognize it for what it was. The mountain lake with its autumn leaves drifting across the calm surface. The slight wobble of the collapsible chair as he settled into it. The bobbing lure a few feet into the water. The tap of his boot against the edge of the wooden dock, drumming out the soothing beats of ACDC.

"Hello, Dean."

The hunter looked over and up. The angel was standing next to him, haloed by the afternoon sun as he stared forward, observing the lake with a seriousness that belied the serene view. Dean smiled as the last piece of the dream slid into place.

"Hey, Cas. How's it hanging?"

The angel looked down at him, a small frown forming between his eyes as he considered the question. Dean always loved when he did that. It amused him to no end.

"It is…hanging well."

The hunter snorted, mouth splitting into a wide grin. Castiel tilted his head.

"Nevermind. Inside joke."

Blue eyes regarded him profound severity. "We are not inside."

This time Dean rolled his eyes and looked back out onto the water. "Human joke, then."

"Ah." Castiel returned his gaze to the water. They settled into silence. The trees rustled with the fall breeze. Cas's trench coat flapped in time with the wind. Dean's lure bobbed with a potential catch. He decided he could reel it in in a minute.

"You are injured."

He looked up in surprise at the angel. "Huh?"

Castiel reached out and took his towel-wrapped hand from where it rested on the arm of the chair. A beer sat inches from his fingers, settled in the koozie drink holder. Dean vaguely remembered cutting himself on the bottle, though this one was intact. Huh.

"It's nothing," he dismissed, even as Castiel unwrapped the towel. There wasn't any blood on the fabric, which Dean found curious. The cuts were fresh: the edges raw. Cas held his palm in both his hands, almost reverently as he stared down at the injury. Dean thought he could feel the angel's thumbs rub gentle circles over his skin, but Cas's fingers were not moving.

He looked up at his friend as they sat there, all but holding hands while nothing happened. Distantly, Dean thought he should be weirded out.

"You can't heal me, can you?" He didn't know why he asked it. The answer was obvious, laid out before him in the cuts that still marred his skin. Cas would have already healed them if he could. The words were nothing but salt in a painful wound for the angel. But still he said them.

Cas looked at him with such sorrow that he instantly regretted his impulsive, selfish mouth.

"There's not enough left." His words were quiet but even. There was nothing behind them, unlike the pain in the wrinkles of his forehead or the apology in his eyes. Merely a fact he couldn't change.

Dean wasn't sure what the angel meant, but assumed it was his diminished grace. Metatron had done quite the number on the thing Cas considered his soul.

His stomach twisted unpleasantly. Well, Metatron and Lucifer. "I'm sorry, Cas."

The angel's piercing eyes come back to him. Storm clouds were moving in from the east, changing the blue sky to grey. The wind picked up, shuffling more dying leaves into the water. He swallowed heavily.

"I couldn't save you. I didn't…" Dean trailed off, looking away as he was unable to say it aloud. _I couldn't stop Lucifer from wearing you to the end of the world. I didn't even try._

"It was my choice, Dean."

"Yeah, well, it was a stupid choice!" The hunter stood from the chair, towering over his friend, though he was hardly taller. Castiel only watched calmly. The lack of emotion – of any reaction – suddenly irritated him. "What the hell were you thinking, man? Saying yes to the Devil? After everything we went through putting him back in the box the first time?"

Cas didn't answer, just regarded the hunter silently until something drew his attention away. He looked over his shoulder, back towards shore.

"Damn it, Cas, don't you dare fly off on me!"

Castiel turned back to him, eyes lit and serious. The angel held out two fingers pressed familiarly together. "You need to wake up now, Dean."

Those fingers touched his forehead and, for a second, Dean wondered what would happen to the fish still caught on his line.

-o-o-o-

Dean shot off the couch with a gun in his uninjured hand and a blanket in the other. It took him a minute to orient himself, swinging the weapon in a half circle as he took in the room and all potential threats.

"Whoa, Dean, put the gun down, son. It's just us." It was Bobby, arms raised and to Dean's right, by his desk. Battle-hardened eyes accepted him as a non-threat and swung around to the other two occupants of the room, standing by the door to the hall. Sam pushed Jess behind him, keeping both his hands clearly visible.

The hardened hunter almost collapsed as his body released the tension and adrenaline it had stockpiled. Dean lowered the gun. The room let out a collective breath as the others dropped their arms. Jess stepped out from behind Sam.

"Sorry," he mumbled, tucking the gun into his jeans. He looked down at the blanket in his hand, wondering how it had gotten there, before chucking it onto the couch.

"Are you-" His brother took an aborted step towards him, awkwardly trying to express his concern without actually showing any of it, in case it drove Dean further away. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," the older Winchester answered automatically, passing a hand through his hair as he looked around the room, at his younger brother and his (not) dead girlfriend, at his (not) dead father figure. Still in 2005. So, not a crazy dream after all.

Speaking of crazy dreams. His eyes landed back on the couch. That had been an odd one. He had never dreamt of Cas before – well, he _had_ , obviously, but his mind had never been the one supplying the angel. It had always been the real Cas. Dean had never come up with the winged dick all on his own before. At least, not in thatdream, with the lake and dock and the fish he never got to reel in. Nightmares were another story, and one he was steadfastly not going to think about.

But his mind had definitely been responsible for his feathered friend this time. Had to be, because Cas was gone. Or, well, not gone. But not here, in this timeline, aware of who Dean Winchester was and inclined to visit his dreams for some chitchat. And even if he did for some odd reason, this-time Castiel wouldn't be the same – wouldn't even know him. And he definitely wouldn't have known about Lucifer.

No, this had to be a product of his strained mental state. Dream-Cas hadn't even been Ten-Years-From-Now Cas. That one understood pop culture references (sort of) and got most of Dean's idioms (even if he was terrible at using them himself) and couldn't fly away from conversations he didn't want to have anymore. No, dream-Cas had been more like...Apocalypse Cas. Team-Free-Will era: pre-God, pre-purgatory and pre-Sam's-scarred-mind.

In some twisted way, it made sense that he'd conjured up that version. That had been his best friend, and those had been the high times of their friendship. Before so much crap and pain and lies had weighed them down until they barely knew each other anymore and all that was left was guilt and loyalty leftover from better versions of themselves.

Dean shook his head. They didn't have time for this head-shrink crap. They had more important things than analyzing a crumbling relationship that didn't even exist anymore outside of a dream.

He gave the couch one last fierce look before he faced his family. All of who were sporting questioning expressions of their own.

"Sorry," he said automatically. "Odd dream."

"What kind of dream?" Sammy asked, a little too quickly and a lot too forwardly. Dean gave him a funny look.

 _Oh, you know, Sammy. Just the Touched By An Angel kind. Only you don't know angels exist and this one isn't supposed to be in my head yet._

"Just a dream," he answered instead, eyeing his brother warily. When Sam looked like he was about to press for more, Dean added with a shrug, "I was fishing. Off a dock on some mountain lake."

Sam's brow creased in confusion, then disappointment. "Oh."

"Yeah, 'Oh.'" Dean mimicked with confusion all his own. What the hell had the kid been hoping he was dreaming about?

"Well, if we're done sharing?" Bobby muttered, uncrossing his arms. "Can we get back to the demon crisis, ya idjits?"

They gathered around the desk where the old hunter had laid out several of his best demon guide books, all open to various traps and spells and exorcisms.

"Look, I spent the last six hours-" _Six hours?_ Dean checked the clock shoved haphazardly between books on the shelf behind Bobby's desk. _Why the hell didn't anyone wake me up?_ "-checking for demonic omens all around the University and Palo Alto for the last week. I got nothing."

"Demonic omens?" Sam asked, leaning over to scan one of the books.

"Crop death, animal mutilations, freak lighting storms. The signs vary, but they're all pretty easy to spot when they happen. Bunch of cows gutted in a field tends to make the evening news."

Jess looked fairly sick and Sam grimaced.

"But there was none of that near Stanford?" Sam asked, moving over to the large map of the California bay area Bobby had spread out.

"Not a lick anywhere on the map," he answered with a huff. "If something was supposed to go down, it sure as hell wasn't coming gift-wrapped."

"What does that even mean?" the younger Winchester asked, straightening up. "Brady said they had plans for me. I'm assuming ' _they_ ' are demons higher up the food chain?"

Bobby gave a half shrug. "Sure, sounds 'bout right. But I'm telling you, bigger fish would have left a calling card of some sort." He waved his hands towards the map. "We got nothing."

"Maybe…" Jess's softer voice broke the silence in the room. She looked hopefully at Sam. "Maybe he was lying?"

He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into his chest. He kissed the top of her forehead. "I don't think that's a risk we can take, Jess."

She returned the hug for a moment, savoring his arms around her and letting herself have a second of codependent comfort before pulling away. Jess was a strikingly independent woman, one of the things she knew Sam loved about her and something she sure as hell loved about herself. Though this had shaken her to her core and she was definitely not okay in any definition of the word, she wasn't the type to bury herself in comfort when they had things to face.

"So what's next?" she asked, steel in her voice and determination in her eyes. Sam wanted to kiss her even more, but held himself back. He glanced over at his brother – a default move anytime he caught himself being too 'chick-flicky' with the love of his life. He hated himself for it; screw Dean's macho insecurities and closet-homophobia.

Despite all that, he still looked fleetingly at his big brother and frowned at what he saw.

"Dean?"

The older hunter looked up from where he was staring at Bobby's desk. His memory was pretty fuzzy on the whole thing, but he thought there had been signs in Palo Alto the first time around. He was pretty sure Dad had said as much, though he couldn't recall when or why. But Dean pushed that to the side for now and raised his eyebrows at his brother in question. He hadn't been paying much attention to whatever was being said. "Huh?"

"You…okay?"

Green eyes squinted under a furled brow and he gave that annoyed pull back of his head he did anytime he didn't get why someone was asking him something. "Yeah, fine. Why?"

Sam lowering his gaze to his brother's chest, where his hand was absently rubbing. Dean followed the pointed look, only to realize what he was doing and pull his arm away.

Huh. He'd been doing that a lot, hadn't he?

"I'm fine," he reassured all three of them yet again. He kept his thoughts away from holes caused by Hell and the slight ache spread across his pectorals like a heat wrap.

Sam opened his mouth, probably to argue some more about his definition of 'fine,' when Rumfeld's fierce barking erupted from outside. Jess jumped and Bobby had a shotgun already in hand. Dean knew better than to ask where the hell it had come from.

There was a knock at the door.

Dean and Sam drew their guns as well, now. All four of the rooms' occupants turned their sights to the front entryway beyond the hall. Jess moved behind the younger Winchester.

"You expecting guests?"

The old hunter shook his head and the group moved together to the front of the house. Sam kept Jess behind him when she refused to go down to the panic room if they weren't all going.

Dean gave Bobby a signaled look, tucking his gun back into his pants as another knock sounded. It was innocent enough – even polite as far as knocks went. But the hunters were too experienced to let their guard down for any reason. Bobby nodded back, shotgun already cocked. He stepped off to the side of the door, ready to fire should anything unfriendly come through. Eyes still locked on Dean, he pointed upwards at the ceiling and swirled his finger in a circle.

The older Winchester nodded in understanding.

Sam maneuvered Jess out of sight from the doorway, standing near her but within eye-line of the porch. He gave a nod to his brother, and Dean opened the door.

It was a young man standing on the other side, fist raised to knock for the third time. His eyes widened in surprise and he gave a little 'Oh!' before taking a step back. His smile was genuine, his dress shirt newly pressed and his tie ever so slightly askew. Absolutely nothing about him screamed evil.

Dean didn't buy it for a second. Rumfeld was still snapping and snarling at the end of his chain.

"Sorry to bother you, sir," the kid began, glancing a little nervously at the Rottweiler only a few feet away. "I'm with the Souix Falls Kingdom Hall, and I was hoping to speak to you today about our Lord and Savior-"

"Yeah, sorry, pal. We ain't the religious type."

"Oh, uh…" the kid's face fell and he looked around awkwardly. "That's- That's okay. Have you ever considered letting the Lord into your life?"

Dean stared at the man with an unwavering glare. "Yup. Didn't work out so well for me."

He blinked, clearly not expecting that. Dean wasn't surprised. Even if he was human, which he seriously doubted, it wasn't exactly a common reply. "I'm sorry to hear that. May I ask what went wrong?"

 _Sure, pal_.

"The world ended. Now, if you don't mind." He made a shooing motion with his hand and the Jehova's Witness, eyes wide, looked back behind him at the way he'd come.

"Oh. Um. Yes, well." He looked down at the book in his hand, then back up to Dean. "If you're sure?"

"Pretty damn."

The kid just nodded and turned to step off the porch. The hunter actually thought he might well and truly leave. But he stopped at the edge, made an aborted movement, and spun back around. Dean's eyes narrowed.

"Are you sure you don't-"

"Christo."

The man's eyes immediately turned black and he sneered, innocent act gone in the blink of those depthless eyes. Dean smirked, pointedly looking up at the devils trap newly painted in a subtle grey on the roof of the porch. Sam and Bobby had obviously made some improvements while Dean had slept. Awesome.

"Well, Sammy. Looks like you get to practice your first exorcism."

-o-o-o-

They took care of the demon right then and there on the porch. He snarled and bitched and threatened to no avail. Bobby handed Sam a heavy tomb entitled _The Key of Solomon_ and the kid performed the Latin exorcism without a hitch. This time, though, they sent the bastard back home with a message: Leave Jess out of this.

The others hadn't quite known what to make of it when Dean said it aloud, but their agreement was there. They just weren't sure what 'this' was. It was becoming more and more obvious that Dean did, though.

"Time to finish that earlier conversation, boys." Bobby handed them both beers as he came down the basement stairs. His stony expression and pointed look in Dean's direction told them he was serious. "I hear of three…maybe four possessions a year. You've got two in the span o' twenty-four hours? What's going on that you ain't told me?"

They had relocated to the basement, with Jess tucked in the panic room, Sam sitting on the cot beside her, and Dean in the doorway. Bobby joined them, leaning against the small desk next to the entrance. It was a bit cramped, but they all agreed it was safer this way.

The demons obviously knew where they were now. Dean had no doubt the fake bible thumper had been a scout, seeing if the Winchesters had retreated to Singer's and fully intending to leave once he had that information. Just hadn't counted on a devil's trap sticking him to the porch with no way out. At least with him kicking and screaming his way back downstairs, it would take longer for him to report to his superiors. They had a little time, but not much. Shit was going to go down, and it was probably going down soon.

Sam looked to Dean, expecting him to come clean. Dean knew the kid had no idea what he had to come clean about. Didn't matter anyway. He had no intention of telling the truth.

Problem was, he hadn't figured out what he _was_ going to tell them.

The silence stretched on in the iron room as Dean wracked his brain for something plausible that would explain how he had known Brady was a demon, that Bobby had a panic room, and all the other shit he had no reasonable explanation for knowing. He couldn't keep dodging the question for much longer – he could tell from the looks his brother and Bobby were giving him.

But he needed time to think. A half-assed lie now would only get him caught sooner rather than later, and if he was going to fix everything he needed _time_.

Dean was an action sorta guy. He worked great under pressure when that pressure was something he could physically fight. Planning wasn't his strong suit, and definitely not something he did well last minute, with no room to think.

 _Son of a bitch, what do I say?_

"Dean." His brother's voice pulled him out of his desperate, circling thoughts that were going absolutely nowhere. He looked up, meeting Sammy's gaze and blinking in surprise at the expression on his brother's face. Sam's eyes were earnest and understanding and desperately pleading for something that he wasn't sure he understood.

"Have you…" he faltered, then steeled his expression as best as twenty-two year old Sam could. "Are you having dreams about things before they happen?"

Dean blinked. What? Why would Sam think-

His brain ground to a halt. Of course Sam would think he was having psychic dreams. Because _Sam was having psychic dreams_. Son of a bitch! How had he forgotten that?

Because it had been so long since he'd had one. Sam had stopped having them after they'd killed Azazel. Sure, he'd kept juicing up his psychic demon-killing abilities, but he never mentioned having dreams again.

It had been years and years ago, but Sam had once told Dean he'd dreamt of Jess's death days before it happened. Which meant he was having psychic dreams – those dreams – right _now_ , and he didn't know why. And Sam, being Sam, would find relief in thinking he wasn't alone: that he wasn't the only freak. Dean was his brother by blood – why shouldn't he, too, be channeling the psychic mumbo-jumbo.

Not to mention he'd known about the woman in white after _waking up_ in the Impala. Sure, that was because he'd woken up from a ten year time jump, but Sam didn't know that. For all he knew, Dean could have dreamt about Demon Brady and hauled ass back to Stanford cuz of it.

Suddenly the constipated looks his brother kept giving him made a hell of a lot more sense.

The older hunter scrubbed his hand through his hair and raced through the pros and cons of claiming he was dreaming of the future. His list was quickly piling up on the pros, with minor cons he could deal with later. Son of a bitch, this might actually work. Sammy was unknowingly giving him an out. And, even better, it was a plan that meant _not_ isolating his little brother as a freak of nature this time around.

That would probably be a plus.

But he couldn't just outright admit it. No version of him, circa 2005 or later, would ever come out of the supernatural closet without some serious denial. So he hunched up his shoulders and tried for his best defensive, bitchy tone. "What? No. I haven't- What are you talking about Sammy?"

Sam swallowed heavily, but his eyes were set with determination. He'd played just enough panic into his words to make his little brother see the dismissal for what it was. "It's okay, Dean. I've been having them too."

Bobby's head whipped around to focus on the younger Winchester. He'd been sitting quiet, watching this all unfold (and giving Sam an odd look or two as the conversation turned back to dreaming once more). But now his attention was fully on the younger of the boys.

"Come again?"

Sam didn't answer the older hunter. His focus was solely on his brother as he stood from the cot. "Dean, what Brady said about- about hurting Jess." He glanced down at the love of his life, who was watching him with wide, doe eyes. He looked back at his brother. "I've been dreaming about it. For- for weeks. Exactly as he…described."

Jess reached out and grabbed his hand in both of hers. She knew he'd been having nightmares for a while now, but he never told her what they were about. Not that she would have believed him before all of this. (Part of her was still struggling to believe any of this, even now.)

"I thought," Sam trailed off again. "I was too young to remember Mom, but you told me how she died. I thought I was just…getting cold feet or something. That it was just nerves."

It took a minute for Dean to realize what his brother was talking about. Sam had been thinking of proposing before Jess had died. Realization settled in his stomach like lead. It would have been so easy for Sam to write off his dreams as anxiety. His mother had died in a horrible manner, and he was about to ask the love of his life to marry him. To one day become the mother of his children. It was pretty easy to see the connection and sweep it under the rug as his mind's way of visualizing his anxieties.

Dean let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Damn it. The kid hadn't told him that before.

Bobby was looking between the two of them with disbelief. Dean ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. He'd probably stalled enough to be believable.

"Yeah, Sammy." He made sure to put a touch of defeat in his tone. Never surrender without a fight; that was the Dean Winchester way. "I've been seeing shit too."

The sheer relief of ' _I'm not alone'_ that filled Sammy's face at Dean's confession was almost enough to make him wish he _was_ having psychic dreams. If only so the feel-good comfort of offering his brother so much support wasn't tainted by the bittersweet knowledge that he was once again lying his ass off to his family.

Bobby stood to his full height, confronting Dean with his most serious _'no more bullshit'_ face. "Let me see if I got this right. You boys-" he glanced at Sam, "- are seeing the future? In yer _dreams_?"

Dean knew it wasn't a lack of belief that Bobby was held up on. Hell, with all the shit he'd scene and company he kept, he knew there were real psychics and clairvoyants out in the world. He just never thought in a million years that John Winchester's boys would be two of 'em.

"Dean," Sam croaked, interrupting the older hunter before Dean could formulate a believable Dean-2005 response. "Did you….did you dream of Jess, too?"

The older of the two brothers glanced at the woman on the cot beside Sam. She seemed small, now. Fragile, even though he knew she was pretty strong for a civilian. He shook his head. "No. I, uh, just knew Brady was possessed."

"And the woman in white?"

Bobby's head swiveled like a bobble head. "What woman in white?" He sounded about half a step away from beating answers out of the two brothers if they didn't start paying his questions some attention.

Dean gave a shrug. "Yeah, her too. Brady seemed more, you know, pressing." He turned to Bobby, knowing they were in for one heck of an explosion if someone didn't start talking sense. "The hunt I thought Dad was on, in California. It's a woman in white. I…uh….dreamt about it. And Brady."

He was thankful when Sam took the initiative and launched into his own dream experiences, since Dean didn't have much more of a lie ready to spin. Bobby listened as Sam described finding Jess pinned to the ceiling. She looked slightly green around the edges and he glossed over some of the more gruesome details Dean knew about. But the older of the two confirmed it was exactly as Mom had died, and exactly as Brady had described.

Bobby turned expectantly to him, crossing his arms over his chest. Dean shifted under the stare.

"I dreamt the kid was possessed. Was gonna make a move on Sam. Didn't know what," he lied, and winced as he realized how vague and utter crap-tastic this all sounded. "Just knew it was gonna happen soon."

The old man raised an eyebrow at him, suspicion clear in his body language. Bobby knew Dean. And the man he knew would have been damn uncomfortable about having psychic mojo, let alone embracing or _listening_ to it.

"And you, what, knew you were psychic? Just like that?"

Dean managed not to flinch, instead clenching his jaw defensively. "It wasn't the first time," he lied through his teeth.

Sam perked up at that, but his brother didn't want to elaborate. If he played it off like it wasn't a story he was keen on retelling, they might drop it. Which would work well for him, as he didn't actually have a story and he definitely didn't want to try telling one.

"It was a couple weeks ago. I thought it was crazy, so I ignored it." He looked away. "Bad idea. People got hurt."

His brother immediately backed down, like he knew the kid would. Sammy knew the guilt Dean carried when civilians ended up with backlash from their jobs. He wouldn't push, especially if he thought that wound was recent.

"This time, it was Sammy," Dean finished, defensively. He shouldn't have to say anymore, Bobby would get the idea. "So yeah, I acted on it."

It seemed to work. The old hunter was still watching him warily, but accepted the information. "Alright," he answered begrudgingly. "So you're both…suddenly psychic. Think we can add that to the bucket of weird we got going on."

"Tell me about it," Dean muttered.

"What do you think it means?" Sam was looking between the two earnestly. Dean kept forgetting how young the kid was. Still so freakin' innocent, despite everything twenty-two years had shown him. But, in comparison to what the next ten years would deliver, this was definitely innocence.

"I haven't got a clue," Bobby supplied, shaking his head. He tore his cap off and ran his hands through his hair a couple times before replacing the trademark hat. "But I think whatever you've stepped into…it's serious crap, boys."

The group fell silent as the weight of events settled heavy in the room. They needed a next step, and they didn't have a lot of time to come up with it. Even with two 'psychics,' they were fighting blind.

And Dean didn't know how much he could risk telling them.


	7. Season 1: Chapter 6

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _- **A/Ns** : Super short chapter this time. Had difficulty cutting up five, six, and seven, so this one ended up a little short. Next one is back to full length!_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** I...I think Dean may not even be swearing in this. My God, what is the world coming to. Nope, that's it. Skip this chapter, go ahead and just move right on to the next one._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 6

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

In the end, they decided to abandon Bobby's place for some time. The hunter was none too happy to be leaving his home behind, even temporarily, but they all agreed that they didn't want to see what an angry demon would do to a house lacking the Winchesters.

So they filled one of his trucks with relevant books, supplies, and as many weapons as he had (which was no small number). Rumfeld climbed into the passenger seat, and Bobby told the boys he'd follow behind them.

The small caravan pulled out just two and a half hours after the possessed church-goer had come to tattletale on them. Forty five minutes of that had been taken up burying the poor guy who played meatsuit to the scout, and arranging Bobby's clunkers atop the freshly dug grave in case anyone stopped by over the next couple days.

Jess had stubbornly helped out, despite Sam's insistence that she should be inside in the panic room and definitely _not_ out in the open burying a corpse. Dean was beginning to think she didn't like being locked in their little war-room like a princess in a tower, or something.

The two cars headed south. West was out – that was the way they came, and something about heading back didn't sit well with Sam or Jess. East was towards the Great Lakes. Dean didn't want to box themselves in along the Canadian border in case Hell came at them hard. Southeast was the older Winchester's first choice – Kentucky was sounding like good pickings and was central enough to host all the directions as backup options. Except the logical route that shied away from the Lakes also took them way too close to Lawrence, Kansas. There was no way in hell Dean was driving anywhere near there with demons on the lookout for them.

So south they went.

They couldn't lie low with any of their friends. It was clear from the demon showing up at Bobby's that Hell was scouting out their acquaintances. Dean remembered Meg doing something similar, if not a hell of a lot more permanent. He hoped she wasn't on the playing field yet, but reminded himself he had a list to make, and she needed to be near the top of it.

Sam made quick calls to the friends they could get a hold of, telling them to go to ground for a few days or be weary of anyone coming by. None were happy to hear that the Winchesters had freaking _demons_ on their tail and determined ones at that. But they promised to keep their eyes and ears open and stay safe.

Dean turned west once they hit Omaha, cutting onto Interstate 80 before they ended up in the too-close-to-home parts of Kansas. He'd turn south again once they'd cleared Lexington.

He resisted calling Ellen. They hadn't met her yet, so it was likely the demons wouldn't bother her or Jo. Although it still wouldn't hurt to give the Roadhouse a heads-up. Maybe he could convince Bobby to call them, so it wasn't suspicious coming from him. They needed to send some hunters to Jericho, too. The older hunter could probably wrangle someone up for that.

Bobby would need an anti-possession charm, too. They should have gotten him one before they got in separate cars. Really, they were going to have to visit a tattoo place sooner rather than later.

They drove until they were two states over and starving. The diner they stopped at specialized in grease and cold French fries, but it was the only place open, so they didn't complain. Well, Dean did, but the others just shoveled food while they argued about where to go next.

After some back and forth, they settled on Rufus' cabin. Dean had to pretend he didn't know what Bobby was talking about or who Rufus was. He only slipped up twice, but totally covered it like a pro. No suspicions there, whatsoever. (And _no, Sammy, I haven't dreamt this already, now drop it!_ )

The old hunter said the cabin was secluded, heavily protected, and unknown by almost anyone other than him and a handful of hunters. Even if demons did somehow get their claws into those guys, none of them would connect Rufus with the Winchesters. Hell, they'd hardly connect Rufus with Bobby anymore, since the two had a falling out some time ago (which Dean reminded himself he totally didn't know about because _he didn't know the man yet._ )

Bobby begrudgingly called the grumpy jackass as they headed out to the car. He promised a couple bottles of Johny Walker Blue in exchange for use of the cabin for a few weeks. The caravan turned north and headed for the Canadian border.

-o-o-o-

Jess was just starting to doze off when Sam turned around in the front seat and gently tapped her knee. "Jess, give me your phone."

She mumbled unintelligently as she dug into her pocket and pulled out the small flip device. She handed it over, peering at her boyfriend through exhausted lids. Sam turned the phone over and slid the battery cover and power unit out. She sat up, significantly more awake, as she realized what he was doing.

"They can track it," he answered her unasked question as he pulled out the chip and snapped it in half.

"Oh."

He passed the phone back with an apologetic expression. She took it with numb fingers and he threw the broken sim card out the window. Laying back down, she pressed her forehead to the cold glass. The scenery blurred past with every mile and she thought of nothing in particular.

-o-o-o-

Bobby scoffed when Dean mentioned an anti-possession charm at their next pit stop. He pulled a length of cord from the neckline of his shirt to show a much more complex token then the ones the Winchesters wore. Dean just smirked – should have known.

The older hunter took the, "You're awesome, Bobby," as apology enough.

-o-o-o-

Montana was beautiful. Jess wondered why she'd never visited before. Possibly because golden wheat fields and flat farmlands were seemingly the only thing to see for three quarters of the state. But as they turned further west and dug into the mountains and forests that made up the western edge, Jess regretted not having made time before.

They stopped for dinner in Missoula. They'd been driving through the day and she was stiff and achy and so damn sick of the car. Those precious two hours they spent in an actual restaurant (that served more than burgers and beer, thank God) would be the last of civilization for some time. When she could drag her feet no longer, they got back in the car and headed for Whitefish.

An hour and a half later, the highway rounded a bend to reveal a large expanse of black in the night. It was a massive lake, nestled between looming peaks to the right and rolling hills to the left. The water was eerily calm as the highway stretched out along the shores. Jess could see silver pinpricks of light reflected in the inky depths. The sky was endless here, stretching into eternity and brimming with more stars than she had ever seen before. They clouded the night with their abundance and Jess realized she was looking at the Milky Way.

She wanted to tell the boys to pull over. Three days ago she would have called it romantic and insisted, teasingly, that her boyfriend hold her while they lay on the hood of the classic old car beneath the starry sky. Sam would press his cheek to her hair and whisper he loved her. She'd punch him in the arm and say he'd better. They'd lazily kiss as satellites passed above and the lapping of the lake sung to them.

But that was then, and today was not the same life. So she didn't say anything at all and they drove on.

The town of Whitefish, Montana was an hour past the big lake, nestled at the foot of heavy mountains. Signs pointed towards another lake, apparently the community's namesake and the center of the town, but they sped past without turning. This friend of Bobby's was a bit of a recluse, or so the old hunter had told them. His cabin was another forty-five minutes into the countryside, down dirt roads and dark woods.

'Secluded' was turning out to be an understatement.

-o-o-o-

When they finally arrived at the cabin, it was all any of them could do just to get their stuff through the door and collapse on whatever available bedding there was. Rumfeld tried his darnedest to claim one of the beds, but Bobby put an end to that pretty quickly.

Dean volunteered for floor duty, snagging one of the sleeping bags Rufus kept stashed in the minimal storage space available in the cabin. He was so tired he missed Bobby's suspicious glare as he navigated the small lodge like he'd been there before.

Jess could care less where she slept, just as long as it wasn't that damn car. Sam still gave her the bed (insisted) and folded himself up on an ugly, broken down couch.

Bobby shoved Rumfeld off the only other cot available and settled down himself. They weren't a talkative group that night, and most of them were out within minutes.

-o-o-o-

Elsewhere, where the air was heavy with the scent of burning, of acid and sulfur and all the horrors of the earth, a meeting was just beginning. It was an unprecedented gathering; the forces of Hell rarely got together due to the fact that objectives were hard to accomplish when the players wanted to slit each other's throats.

This time it was different. This time the ruling heads of Hell had a common goal that outweighed petty power struggles.

There was a middle-aged man, hair thinning and skin just beginning to loosen and wrinkle in age. He looked like he should be working a farm in his plaid flannel and worn jeans. Possibly with two kids, a faithful but unhappy wife, and a white picket fence that had become more off-white after so many years without care.

There was a young girl, offset and out of place in such a dark and bleeding space. She wasn't even a tweener yet, in a pretty yellow dress with a big white bow in the back. Her presence was all wrong, but if someone had asked about it, they would assume it was the atmosphere of Hell throwing such disdain and wickedness into what should be an innocent countenance.

The last of the three was a dapper fellow. It was an expensive suit he wore in all black. Even the finely pressed dress shirt was black. The only splash of color, if it could be called that, was a tie so dark blue it was nearly black itself. It was perfectly knotted.

He looked positively miserable, swirling a glass of scotch in his hand with a chunk of ice that never melted, despite the awful heat around them.

"The Winchesters have gone off grid," the farmer was saying to the little girl. She had a pretty little frown on her small face. "We're searching for them, but they're hunters. They know how to hide."

"Then flush them out," the child ordered, crossing her arms over her flat chest. "They have friends, don't they?"

The farmer gave a shrug. "Also gone to ground. Looks like the boys warned 'em we were coming."

The man all in black looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, for reasons of sheer boredom as he stared down at his drink with idle interest. The other two talked around him.

"This wouldn't have happened if your boy hadn't given himself away, Azazel."

"And it's the reason he's on the rack, right now." The ever-present screams of Hell could easily be heard in their meeting spot. Those wails could be heard all throughout Hell; they were not escapable. Just another part of home sweet home. "Though, he is rather insistent Dean knew beforehand."

"Impossible," the girl dismissed flippantly.

Azazel shrugged. The dapper fellow swirled his glass miserably before taking a long sip. The ice clinked against the glass.

"Not entirely impossible," he finally spoke, voice lilting with a British accent. "It lines up with what my girl had to say. Dean Winchester called her up like some two-cent whore." He sounded personally insulted. "Sent her packing and didn't even pay. It's bad form."

"Forget bad form, Crowley," the girl snapped, tapping her shiny white dress shoe against the hard, scorched earth that made up the room they stood in. "He shouldn't have any form at all. We spent two decades observing that waste of a meatsuit. He's competent as a hunter, fine, but he's a hothead. Not exactly the brains of the operation."

The little girl rolled her eyes petulantly and concluded, "We know how to deal with him."

"Clearly not." In contradiction to his words, Crowley sounded like he couldn't care one way or another.

The girl, on the edge of a temper tantrum as her pretty face turned red and puffed like an offended peacock, reigned herself in with practiced control. "Forget Dean Winchester. We need to get back on track with Sam. Move up the schedule if we have to."

"I've still got a few tricks when it comes to the Winchesters," the farmer said. His eyes flashed a pale yellow that did horrible things to the face he wore. "My children will get to them one way or another."

The girl nodded, satisfied. "Tell that daughter of yours that I want John Winchester. I don't care how she finds him. We'll use him to get Sam on course if we have to." She scrunched up her nose in distaste. "I'd rather fry his bitch, but daddy will do."

Azazel frowned, concern ill-fitting in his yellow pupils. "We may be passed that, Lilith. Even if we do kill the girl, Sam may not succumb to revenge. With how much Dean has interfered already, we may not be able to get him on that path. Besides, the boy has never been close to his father – that move has even less chance of success."

"No," she insisted, stomping her foot. "That brainless idiot had a fluke moment of intelligence. Your man is the one that screwed up, Azazel. The plan is fine."

"There is another explanation," the British one spoke up again. He was staring down at the circling cube of ice. The others turned to him: the farmer in vague interest, the little girl in clear disdain. "Upstairs may have caught wind of what we're doing."

He paused for a dramatic moment, raising his eyebrows at his companions. "And I mean the attic, boys and girls."

Lilith frowned fiercely. "If that's true, then we're screwed."

"We've been watching the gate," Azazel argued. "There's been no movement. There hasn't been any in centuries."

Crowley shrugged. "I'm only saying it would explain why Dean is suddenly two steps ahead of us."

The little girl's eyes narrowed. "Then we should move. If angels are getting involved, we move up the timetable. We take John Winchester now."

The dapper man raised a cynical eyebrow. "Isn't that showing our hand a bit early, love?"

She shook her head, black hair and yellow ribbons tossing side to side. "No. We break him, we break the first seal."

" _If_ he's the righteous man," the farmer interrupted. "Which we already know he most likely isn't."

"Doesn't matter. We don't lose anything trying, and we have one less fly to swat." The little girl's eyes gleamed with sinister intent. "The halos keep busy searching Hell for their righteous man, while we figure out how to drag Dean's ass down here. And if Daddy turns out to be Mr. Righteous, then we kill the hothead and pump Sam up while the halos are busy protecting the rest of the seals."

Azazel hesitated, calculating their options. He had planned this for far too long to give in to premature fear or rash decisions. "No. I don't want to take John until we're sure about the angels. If they invade Hell to save him and he _isn't_ the righteous man, we'll have half the force of Heaven down here when we do get Dean. We'll need more time than that to break him."

Crowley scowled down at his glass. "And if the angels _have_ gotten involved?"

The toothy smile the farmer gave stretched his face. "Then we go to plan B."


	8. Season 1: Chapter 7

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Mild violence, demonic possession, blazing guns (and yelling obscenities) _

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 7

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Jess woke from dreams wrought with red eyes, demons made from writhing smoke, and flames that licked at her from every side. She woke gasping and sweating, immediately sickened by the smell of bacon and the sound of it cooking.

Dean was in the 'other' room (what could be called a second room in a one-room cabin) next to the ancient stove, sipping on a beer and cooking up what meager supplies they'd brought with them from Bobby's. The boys had pretty much dumped the contents of his fridge into a cooler and called it done. Which meant every meal after this one would consist of beer, rot-gut whiskey, and more beer.

And maybe mustard. She was pretty sure she saw Heinz Yellow in there.

Bobby was out like a light on the cot next to her bunk, snoring up all kinds of a racket. Jess wondered if it was his demonic breathing that had inspired her vivid nightmares instead of the events of yesterday. He sure as hell sounded like the devil incarnate.

Sam was sitting upright on the old red thing that passed as a couch only because of how exhausted they'd all been when they'd arrived late last night. He was fiddling with his laptop, but she could tell from across the room that he was frustrated about something.

"Morning, Sunshine." She turned her attention to Dean, who gave her a surprisingly cheerful smile for someone who had spent the night in a dusty sleeping bag on the hard, uneven floor. She groaned, pulling herself out of bed to tromp across the cabin and plop down in the creaky armchair beside the coffee table.

She wasn't a morning person to begin with, and certainly not after the nightmare of a day, and night, and another day that she had had. At least she wore bitch-face with style. Sam didn't even _try_ to say morning to her. Just pushed his mug of coffee her direction, forfeiting the liquid gold for the sake of the group.

Jess curled up into the chair with the acquired cup and pretended the world didn't exist for another eleven minutes while Dean finished making up breakfast.

The older Winchester was, indeed, chipper this morning. He felt great; not only had he not dreamt the night before, but he'd slept well despite dreading the aches he would feel after a night on the hard wood floor. He'd practically sprung up the next morning in all his gorgeous, young glory. Being twenty-six again freaking rocked. And sure, his body had hurt _some_ from the unforgiving boards, but nothing compared to the creaks and groans he was used to suffering just climbing out of a _bed_ every morning.

Youth was so friggin' wasted on the young.

He cracked the last egg on the wood burning stove (and my god, he forgot how ancient this cabin was) and went about flipping the bacon. Sam was moaning about something, Jess was focused solely on the warmth between her hands, and Bobby was grumbling that they were all too loud as he finally roused.

Dean grinned as he listened to the old hunter gripe, flipping the eggs and dividing the bacon between four plates. He paused, watching the older man as he made his way outside for the facilities. As soon as the door had closed behind him, Dean glanced to Rumfeld with a raised eyebrow. The dog was sitting patiently next to the fridge, inching forward every few seconds, tail twitching at the sudden attention.

The hunter snagged a piece of bacon off of Bobby's plate and snuck it to the dog. Rumfeld snatched it away and took off with his prize, tailing whipping back and forth in victory. Sam let out a surprised yelp as the dog jumped onto the couch with him. His cry turned quickly into disgust as Rumfeld proceeded to slobber all over his half of the furniture.

"Dean!"

The hunter snickered, distributing the eggs and grabbing plates. He handed one to Jess and the other to Sam, ignoring bitchface # 2 ( _'Ew, Dean, gross!')_. Grabbing his own sustenance, he started shoveling food into his mouth as obnoxiously as possible, just for added effect.

Bobby came back in, snagging his plate off the counter. He frowned at the single piece of bacon, compared to the others' three, and the one very happy dog eyeing Sam's plate. He decided that was one fight he wouldn't win, so tucked in to his meal in silence.

"What's the plan, boys?" he asked between bites, eyeing the brothers. Jess hadn't touched her food yet, leaving it on the low table in favor of coffee. Sam was glaring at Rumfeld, holding his plate protectively to his chest and insisting ' _No'_ as if that was going to do a damn thing to deter the dog.

Ha.

"I want to go into town," the younger Winchester said, glancing up from his battle to protect his breakfast. "I want to check for demonic omens, see if we can figure out where the demons are. This place doesn't have internet, Bobby."

The older hunter shrugged at the young hunter's accusatory whining. "Don't think Rufus knows what internet is."

Sam groaned and Rumfeld took the opportunity to steal half his bacon, almost tipping the entire plate and instigating a slapstick struggle on Sam's part to keep from losing the rest of his breakfast to the floor. He glared at the dog who sat, happily chomping. The giant of a man got up off the couch with his surviving meal and moved to lean against the wall instead.

"I'll go with you," Jess spoke up, eyes watching the dog in a detached way that worried Sam a bit. She turned her gaze to him with a light, weary smile. "I could use civilization like I could use a shower."

His answering smile was apologetic and hurting, and she couldn't look at it for long.

Dean finished his breakfast with a loud burp, pushing his plate onto the coffee table. "I'll go with."

Sam raised an eyebrow and he shrugged. "We need a food run. And I can spend whatever time you two need at a bar." He let the patented Dean Winchester smile shine through. "Maybe I can hustle up some pool."

"Dude."

"What?" He matched Sam's bitchface (#7: _'Really, Dean? Really?'_ ) with one of his own. "We're low on cash."

"It's not even noon," his brother groused. "No one's going to be playing pool in some dive bar."

"Oh, Sammy." Dean's smile only grew as he stood and stretched. "You don't know my people."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Thank God for that."

Rumfeld chose that moment to make a dash for Jess's still full plate on the table. Bobby gave a holler but he took off with the whole thing, eggs and bacon flopping up and down and everywhere as he ran. Jess cracked a smile and Sam handed the rest of his plate to her.

-o-o-o-

Dean did not hit up the nearest dive bar once they'd gotten into town. After he dropped Sam and Jess off at a local coffee shop to do their tech-geek thing, he headed to a small diner just off the main drag.

He ordered a second helping of breakfast (now more like brunch) and a coffee. He sweet talked a pad of paper and a pen off the haggard waitress, who seemed more generous after a few well-timed compliments and the promise of a good tip.

Now he was staring down at the pad of paper lying on the table and the ballpoint pen in his hand. Where the hell did he even start?

Stalling, he wrote at the top: ' _Original Timeline'._ Then Dean sat, staring at the title for a while (long enough to get a refill on his coffee) before he put his pen to the first line.

 _11/2/2005: Jess death, Stanford._

Guess starting at the beginning was as good a place as any.

-o-o-o-

While Sam immediately got to work on checking for demonic omens (and Jess was still not thinking about what that actually entailed), Jess settled down across from him at small table in the coffee shop and opened up her laptop.

The blinking password field atop her darkened desktop seemed somehow surreal to her. The icons, still open Word Document for her psych final, and saved browser tabs were even more so. This laptop belonged to a different person: a Jess that existed last week. A college kid that didn't know about the things that went bump in the night. A twenty-one year old woman who wasn't being chased by monsters, whose biggest concern was passing Calc next quarter.

She ran a hand down her face tiredly. Her skin felt tight across her bones and her eyes would not stop aching despite the six hours of sleep she'd managed last night in that rickety bed. She'd pulled her own share of late nights and stressful stretches since she'd started at Stanford, but none of them had left her this bone-weary and tired. Of course, nothing in college had turned her life quite as upside down as finding out the boy sitting across from her hunted monsters.

Jess logged into the school website and pulled up her e-mails. She needed to message her advisor; she was going to miss the start of next quarter for sure. In fact, she was thinking of maybe taking it off entirely to get her head back on straight. That was, of course, if demons weren't still trying to kill her three months from now. God, she couldn't imagine living this way for months. But going to classes after all this...it seemed absurd. It was everything she desperately, desperately wanted – a return to normality, to safety – but somehow now absurd.

It took her a while to word the e-mail correctly and not sound crazy, or desperate, or in need of some serious counselling. Instead, she went with the succinct and simple family emergency that would require at least a month off, maybe more. Her advisor was a pretty damn awesome lady, so she was fairly sure she'd be able to swing her some sort of deal that would keep her on track for her courses.

She answered a few of the e-mails she had, a couple from teachers, one from the volleyball club that reminded her to also tell them she wouldn't be back. It broke her heart to decline a work study she'd worked her ass off to apply to and get, but it couldn't be helped.

Finally, she pulled up her Myspace and Facebook accounts. The latter had only just gone live to non-college students a month ago, so the traffic on it was fairly light compared to her Myspace. Mostly just club events and campus parties. Not that she had a lot to respond to on Myspace, either. She really only had it because all of her friends had bugged her non-stop about it until she'd finally made an account.

Last week she had been trying to convince Sam to join Facebook so she could change her relationship status and show off her cute boyfriend to the world (the world being all her college friends who already knew they were dating, of course). Now it seemed like a lifetime ago.

Her stomach twisted unpleasantly, threatening to ruin the actually halfway decent breakfast Dean had cooked them. She hadn't expected him to know a spatula from a spoon in the kitchen, but he'd proven a pretty decent chef, much to her surprise (and Sam's: _"Okay, who are you and what have you done with my brother?")_

She shut down the two social media tabs without looking at them again.

A ding from her computer meant she had a new e-mail in her personal account. The only people who e-mailed her there were high school friends and her parents. Who she should probably send an e-mail to concerning the whole 'skipping next quarter and I lost my phone so don't call, my boyfriend totally didn't destroy it so demons couldn't track us or anything and, oh yeah, I'm not even in California right now but I'm absolutely safe and not in any trouble at all'.

Her to-do list sucked.

Sure enough, the unread message was from her mom. She clicked on it, already mentally preparing her reply before she read the first line.

Sam's search on crop death in the greater Iowa area was abruptly interrupted when his girlfriend launched herself from her seat hard enough to knock it over. The look of horror on her face had him by her side before the clatter of the chair hitting the floor silenced the coffee shop.

-o-o-o-

Dean wrote a list.

And then he crumpled that list up, tossed it to the side, and wrote another list. And another. He was on his fourth crumpled up piece of paper when he realized he was going to need more than one list.

There were hunts he needed to recall, witnesses they had to save, information vital to the case they would need, and things he had to remember to avoid. Like getting electrocuted on a rawhead hunt.

There were enemies alive now that they'd killed so many years ago. Weapons and books and information he couldn't recall enough of to be sure it was reliable. Events were coming that were paramount to the apocalypse but would seem unrelated, and he had to remember it all.

They'd need the colt and the knife. Even if the colt hadn't worked on the devil, it had killed Azazel. So they needed it. It would have to come first, anyway. He had no idea where Ruby had gotten that knife, so he'd have to wait till she showed her ugly mug before he could take it off her. And then kill her well and good before she sunk her claws into Sam.

But before that, he was going to have to take care of Azazel. And Meg. And Lilith. The list was insurmountable, and he had to remind himself several times that they'd done it all before, and over a five year period at that. This didn't have to happen overnight. He had time, and he could do this.

It helped chase the panic away, but did nothing for the heavy knot in his stomach.

He crumpled his fifth paper up and tossed it aside. This wasn't working. There was just too much.

He tore out ten sheets of paper and lined them up in a row. Then, along the bottom of each he drew a line. At the end he wrote " _5/25/2016: Amara fight_ " and at the start he rewrote " _11/2/2005: Jess dead_ ". From there, he filled in the big things he had dates for. Dad's death (10:41 am – he could still hear the doc calling it), Sammy's death and his deal (he'd never forget that date). When his deal came due (possibly harder to forget than the first one). The day Cas pulled him out of hell. The day Sam released Lucifer. The day Sam and Lucifer went into the cage.

He went ahead and filled out the rest of the years too, though he furiously told himself those things wouldn't come to pass – wouldn't matter. But they could still be important: things they'd learned that might help them stop this shit show before it ever got started. People they could go to for help that they hadn't met this time around. Or who hadn't died yet.

Dean was writing down Charlie's name when the waitress came over to refill his coffee yet again. She eyed the papers he was frantically drawing across.

"You a writer, hon?"

He looked up at her with a harried expression, startled by her presence though she'd hardly snuck up on him. "What?"

"You writing a novel?" she repeated, gesturing with the coffee pot at all his little papers and scribbles. She gave him an encouraging, if somewhat pitying smile. "Looks like a depressing one."

Dean looked back down at the papers as she wandered off to see to other customers' needs. Each mark he'd made along the timeline and all the notes at the top were generally death dates. He swallowed tightly at the amount of loss he was looking at in the next few years.

His brain short-circuited for a minute, coming to a full stop.

Writing. Chuck.

He'd forgotten about the damn Prophet of the Lord.

Truthfully, he hadn't thought of the man as the writer in a while, not since discovering he was a hell of a lot more. Fucking bastard. Dean gave the idea of going to God for help all of about three seconds of consideration before shoving the thought and the hope that came with it far, far away. He knew better than to think that asshat of a dad was ever going to step in.

It had taken his own imminent death to even make him consider helping them with Amara. And he still refused to apologize or take any blame for the damn apocalypse – _or anything that had happened after._ No, 'Chuck' wasn't going to help him here.

He was on his own.

The hunter moved on to trying to fill in details. In the lines above the timeline, he listed everything he could remember happening in between major events. He wasn't sure of the order of most of the stuff, but the hardcoded dates along the timeline helped.

He knew Meg went after their friends for the colt. He knew she tried to trap them to get to John Winchester. Both happened before his dad's death, obviously. At least one was after they got the colt from Elkins, though he couldn't remember if the old hunter had ate it before or after Meg showed up the first time. He was pretty sure it was after. They'd seen Dad at least once by the time they met up in Colorado over the vampire nest. That meant all of it happened in 2006. He marked Meg trapping John with a little '1', Elkins with a '2', and Meg killing their friends with a '3'.

It was a start.

He'd gotten as far as Dad's death and the car accident when his phone rang. He was still missing huge gaps, and he could only remember a handful of the hunts he and Sam had done (and almost no definitive dates to pair with them), but he'd written them down all the same. It would have to be enough going forward.

"What's up, Sammy?" he answered the phone without looking. He frowned at what he heard over the line. "What? Where are you? Stay there, I'm coming to you."

He snapped the phone shut, gathered the dozen sheets of paper and shoved them and the pad of paper they'd come out of into his jacket before heading out of the diner.

-o-o-o-

A demon had Jess's parents.

Sam had met Frank and Anne Moore for the first time four months ago when they had visited their daughter and her semi-serious boyfriend they'd heard non-stop about for almost a year. The small group had gone into San Francisco for a day of touring and a wonderful dinner down on the Embarcadero.

He'd liked them immediately, despite being mostly preoccupied with not making a fool of himself. This was the first 'meet the parents' he'd ever had to face outside of that one Thanksgiving at Stephanie Belmont's house back in sixth grade. And while he was definitely nervous back then, it was nothing compared to how his leg shook under the table all throughout dinner.

Jess's hand on his thigh certainly had more of a calming effect than Stephanie's had as a kid.

Frank was an avid fisherman, with his own boat and lobster license too. He worked in construction management and owned a small, but very successful company in Northeastern Boston. Anne was retired, and spent much of her free time volunteering at the hospital where she had spent fifteen years of her Administrative career. The two were somehow still madly in love, had date nights once a week, and we're infamous in the family for their bouts of public dancing (particularly on date nights).

Nothing on earth except a demon could make Frank Moore's face take on such hideous glee while he held a knife to his sobbing wife's throat.

Jess hadn't been able to look at the photo attached to the email since the coffee shop, and had eventually left the safety of Rufus' cabin for some fresh air when the boys and Bobby wouldn't stop _talking_ about it.

Not that it mattered. She'd told them in no uncertain terms they were going. They were going to Boston and she'd give the demons whatever they wanted and they would save her parents. Neither of the brothers had argued or even so much as blinked at the demand.

"Of course we're going," Dean had said before Sam could.

That had been that. The details of it didn't matter to her, and she couldn't be in the same room with them has they hashed it out and wasted time her parents _didn't have_.

The delay was about _how_ to go. Dean was insistent they drive. And only partially because he hated flying and had only successfully managed it twice now. Mostly it was because how the hell were they going to get an arsenal of weapons through security?

But Sam insisted they didn't need their gear. He was new to the demon-fighting game, he freely admitted it, but what could they use against a demon other than holy water and exorcisms?

Bobby didn't like the way Dean's knuckles tightened on the table, like he was restraining himself from saying anything.

It didn't stop him from saying all sorts of things, of course. Like how bullets might not kill the damn things, but they sure as hell slowed them down. (They really didn't, but Dean didn't like going into a hunt without at least one weapon).

That was the point where Jess left the cabin.

In the end, they decided to fly. Whitefish was remote enough as it was without trying to drive halfway across the country. The trip would take them at least two days, and none of them had had enough sleep in the last three to safely traverse the country _and_ take on a demon at the end of the road.

If they flew out that night, they'd be there in the morning and could hopefully catch some sleep on the plane.

Bobby didn't like it much either, but he could bend to reason and was a fair bit more flexible than Dean Winchester would ever be. He promised to make some calls and get them at least a minor arsenal and a car for when they landed. It appeased Dean somewhat but left him with nothing else to fight accept his abhorrent fear of flying (which Sam had easily deduced (for the second time) and still found moments to tease him, despite the situation)

So that afternoon Bobby drove Rumfeld into town and checked him into a dog boarding ranch under a fake name, a fraudulent credit card, and some bullshit excuse of last minute vacation for the girl at the front counter. He didn't feel good about it – felt worse at the look his buddy gave him as they dragged him into the back – but it was what it was.

They left for the Kalispell airport that evening.

-o-o-o-

Sam and Bobby got some sleep on the plane. Dean spent the flight trying to put dents into the armrests with his fingertips. Jess stared out the window at the passing lights far below them and focused her not inconsiderable brain power on not thinking anything at all, lest she spiral into the panic that awaited her at the endless horrors that could be happening to her parents.

-o-o-o-

Dean was a stressed out mess by the time they landed, and only barely managed not to fall to his knees and kiss the ground. At least this plane didn't almost crash. It was a lot better when they didn't almost crash.

As promised, Bobby had contacted a couple hunter friends of his in the Northeast, and they agreed to meet the group with a clean car they could use and some weapons on loan for the job. Neither of the two hunters offered their assistance, and the group didn't ask.

They dumped their duffel bags into the back of the pickup and climbed into the old Ford truck. Dean had fidgeted all the way through security as the officers eyed him and his four empty canteens, two rosaries, two bibles, one gigantic tomb older than all four of them combined (and was there some reason the _Key of Solomon_ couldn't come in an edition smaller than a freaking flat screen TV?), and draw string bag filled to the brim with rock salt. Sam had elbowed him more than once and muttered under his breath to chill out before he got them all thrown in Gitmo.

Jess gave them her parents' address, and they headed out. No one talked much half hour drive. Dean said he had a plan, Sam was fidgety about the lack of details, Bobby had given up trying to get in the middle of the two of them, and Jess didn't want to hear it.

They arrived at the somewhat secluded 1228 Quail Road in Andover, MA at 9:28 that morning. Dean pulled the car off to the side of the backroad street as far from sight as he could and they all stared at the house set back in the wooded area with trepidation.

It didn't look like a demon had moved in. Then again, it never did.

"How do we know they're in there?" Sam asked. There was a car in the driveway, but it wasn't like demons needed motor transportation.

"They're in there." Dean sounded completely sure, and Jess glanced at him. She tried to take comfort in his confidence, but only succeeded in minuscule amounts.

Sam didn't want to ask what his brother was thinking, not in front of Jess, because he didn't want her to know that there was a high likelihood this wouldn't go in their favor. He may not have faced a demon before (Brady didn't count, that demon was already in a devil-proofed trunk by the time he got involved), but he had grilled Dean and Bobby every chance he'd got in the last four days. He needed to know what they were up against.

And now he was pretty sure they were screwed. There was no way they'd be able to take down Frank before he killed Anne in retaliation. Or just because he felt like it. He didn't even need to be near her to do it – he could snap her neck from across the room. The thought made him sick to his stomach, but he sucked it up and shoved it deep down.

"So what's this plan you say you have?" Bobby fiddled with his shotgun in the back seat, loading it up with shells. Beside him, Jess eyed the weapon nervously, despite the fact that they'd already had the discussion concerning a strict 'no shooting the parents' ground rule.

"It's rock salt, Jess," Dean had answered, and she'd found it odd that it may have been the first time he'd ever actually called her by name. "It'll sting like a bitch, but it's not fatal."

"But it'll kill the…demon, right?"

Sam had shaken his head while Dean looked reluctant to answer. "It'll slow him down a bit."

"Piss 'em off, s'more likely."

In response to Bobby's gruff input, Sam had wrapped his hand around hers, thumb rubbing against her skin in what was supposed to be comforting circles. "It'll keep him distracted – away from you and your mom."

Jess nodded, but hardly looked convinced. It took Bobby assuring her they'd use the guns as a last resort only (and giving Dean a pointed look as he did so) that finally settled the manner.

Now Dean was watching Jess in the rear view mirror. "You said it's an old house, right?"

She nodded and listed off the near-ancient date of its construction. The house had been in her mom's family for years, and though the Moores had done some serious remodeling over the years, they'd kept the historical bits the same. They said they liked the old feel and the history. Anne was proud of her Bostonian roots, and more than proud to own a house with two and a half centuries of history in its bones.

Including the sprinkler system from the early forties that Dean seemed oddly interested in. Jess's great-grandfather had been a paranoid nutball. He'd been incredibly proud of the newly installed system back in the day. Called it a marvel of technology and security. He used to tell any who'd listen that most homeowners could only dream of such safety measures.

He was also the reason there was an old rotted out bunker buried somewhere in the backyard with enough SPAM inside to last through 2046.

"Alright, then we spike the water." Bobby and Sam turned sharp eyes to Dean and he grinned at them. "The house is on well water, yeah? We throw a Rosary in there, purify the water, and then we set the house of fire."

"What?" Jess shrieked and the hunter winced.

"Okay, I didn't mean _on fire_. I meant we trigger the sprinklers."

"And the water that comes out would be holy," Sam added, sounding almost breathless as he thought through his brother's plan. That….That wasn't a bad idea. The water would damage a demon enough to at least distract it – at least long enough for Jess to get her mom out of there, maybe even start an exorcism. It didn't guarantee anything; Sam had little hope it would be enough to do the job alone.

That was what Winchester luck was for. It just needed a starting place, and holy water sounded like as good as any.

Bobby was staring at Dean again with narrowed eyes. Where the hell was the kid getting this from? Dean Winchester had always been a hell of a hunter, just like his daddy, but neither of them had won that title from cleverness. Both of 'em earned it out of sheer stubbornness.

But it was a good plan, so he sat back and said nothing. He'd save that battle for another time.

-o-o-o-

They went in guns blazing.

Well, Dean and Bobby went in guns blazing.

Well, Dean and Bobby went in guns blazing with exception to the whole 'we won't shoot your dad, we promise' bit. So really, they went in more like kicking down doors and shouting obscenities once Jess triggered the sprinklers.

Sam gave her a leg up (a pair of six foot tall shoulders more accurately) to pull herself onto the back patio roof about five minutes before the whole rescue operation was going down. From there, she slid her old bedroom window open and slipped inside. It was a trick she'd done a hundred times as a teenage girl sneaking out after curfew and back in before dawn.

A lifetime ago, Sam would have teased her for her delinquent days and she would have slid right up to him and whispered that she'd show him something delinquent alright.

Today, she was pulling a lighter out of her pocket and holding it up to the old pipes and metal sprinkler hanging above her childhood bed. For a moment, nothing happened and her racing heart practically stopped beating. Then water exploded everywhere and she dropped back to the mattress, face and hair soaked and the rest following as she heard the sprinklers kick in out in the hall too.

Enraged screaming followed.

Jess threw herself off the bed, the time for stealth long gone, and broke out into the hall just Dean and Bobby kicked in the front door. True to their word, they didn't shoot her dad. Dean fired off a warning shot aimed more at the ceiling than anything else. Jess rounded the top of the stairs and barreled down almost to the point of falling.

She skidded into the living room in time to see her father facing off against the two hunters just as Dean cocked his shotgun for a second go around and leveled it at Frank. Jess didn't have time to pray that he'd stick to his word, and instead focused on her mom. Anne was huddled over by the sofa, her arms protectively covering her face and her shoulders shaking.

Jess slid to her knees as water pattered down on the ancient hard wood floors. The sprinklers had an automatic shut off after several minutes, but already it was starting to pool on the ground. Her mother was going to be pissed about the water damage when all this settled down.

"Mom!" She wrapped her hands around her mother's shoulders, shaking the older woman gently. "Mom, it's Jess. We have to get out of here; you have to come with me."

Her mother trembled under her hands, but raised her face to her daughter and Jess realized their mistake immediately.

Anne's face was red and blistered, her eyes a deadly black, and the grin that stretched her skin, demented.

Jess couldn't breathe, couldn't even yell. She snatched her hands away like she'd been burned, and with the gleam in her mom's once kind eyes, she might as well have been.

"Hello, _Jessie_ ," the thing hissed, breaking into a laugh even as she lunged for her daughter.

Jess went down hard beneath her mom, body still rooted stalk still. Only her mom called her that. Everyone else called her Jess, but Anne Moore had stuck to calling her daughter the same thing she'd called her in the hospital nursery unit twenty-one years ago, and every afternoon at the park down the street, and on every trip to the mall, and even still through teary-eyed goodbyes on her first day of college.

Jesus Christ, her mom was _in there_.

And that's when Jess started screaming. She kicked and pushed and shoved at the woman that was and was not her mom, who didn't move an inch other than to pull back and raise a knife – the knife her father held to her throat in that wretched photo – high above her head. Jess watched in terror as her mom tried to kill her.

She cried out, but blocked Anne's swing with her arm. The blade sliced through skin and muscle in her fumbled attempt at self-preservation. She grunted against the pain as the knife angled downward towards her heart instead. She wrapped her fingers desperately around her mother's wrist to stall its movement. This wasn't her mom – this thing was far stronger than the fifty-six year old yoga enthusiast who frequented the gym more for the social hour and lunch date with her girlfriends than the actual exorcise. Jess's muscles ached under the strain and her whole arm shook as she kept the knife away from her chest by inches only.

There was a blur of movement to her right and then Anne was suddenly gone in a spectacular tackle by her six-and-a-half foot giant of a boyfriend. The small woman did not go down easy, though, despite her opponent's size. She rolled like a nimble gymnast half her age, coming to a crouch with a barbaric hiss and a sneer at the Winchester boy.

Jess scrambled back, chest heaving from fear and exertion. Sam kept her behind him with an outstretched arm, a canteen in the other. He began reciting an exorcism, keeping Anne at bay with the holy water anytime she tried to get too close. She still had the knife, gripped tightly in her hand as the two circled each other.

When force-throwing Sam across the room and over the back of the couch wasn't enough to stop the exorcism, Anne let out a terrible screech. In a single movement, she spun and threw the knife hilt over blade before flinging herself from Anne Moore's body in a terrible trail of black smoke.

Jess screamed, her first thought for Sam and my god, she was going to watch her boyfriend take a knife to the gut. But when the blade flew past Sam, missing him by several feet, to embed itself in her father's side, she lost it. She didn't care that there was a demon inside of him – that was her _father_ her mother had just stabbed.

Dean caught her across the middle as she hurdled herself towards the demon, who stared down at the knife as if it was nothing more than a nuisance. His body was already twitching and jerking with the exorcism, and wisps of black smoke leaked from the bleeding wound. Frank Moore looked up from the blade to his little baby girl as she kicked and screamed in the arms of the hunter.

He grinned as he opened his mouth and smoked out of the dying meatsuit.


	9. Season 1: Chapter 8

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** None for this chapter. I think even Dean mostly behaves himself. Our favorite King of the Crossroads gets some screen time (though he is less than happy about it)._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 8

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean was an idiot. He was a waste of time and space and god-damn angelic effort. He was useless, was what he was.

For the life of him, he couldn't understand why he'd been so stupid as to think it would only be one demon. As if he hadn't dealt with the bastards long enough and often enough to know that they were cruel, and rarely ever simple.

He'd let himself be lulled by the security of 2005. Two thousand and fucking five, when demon possessions weren't handed out like condoms at a college party. He should have known better. Hell was rearing for an apocalypse, and this was Azazel they were up against. Like hell he'd have sent in just one demon.

Dean resisted his dire need to hit something for the sixth time since they'd arrived at the hospital. He'd have to leave soon, if only to find a wall nurses wouldn't kick him out for punching a hole through. The hunter scrubbed a hand over his face and chanced a look down the hall.

Jess was sitting, numb and unmoving, in one of the waiting halls. Her forearm had been stitched and wrapped tightly in white, sterile gauze. Sam sat next to her, his bean stalk frame slumped. He held her hand and neither of them said a word.

Dean knew what was coming. Even in a new timeline, in a hospital he'd never been in after a fight he'd never fought first time around, he could see what was coming.

So he pushed off the wall and headed in the opposite direction.

This was going to end, Jess and her family were going to be safe, and he damn well knew what was needed to do it.

-o-o-o-

"I can't do this."

She hadn't meant to say it. Or, rather, she had meant to say it – had been meaning to say it for almost a week – but she hadn't meant to say it like that. Just blurt it out, in the middle of a silent hospital hallway, with Sam sitting next to her while they waited to find out if she still had a father.

Frank had gone into surgery the minute they'd arrived, tires screeching to a halt outside the Emergency entrance. The car they'd borrowed from those other guys was a mess of blood now. She wondered with detached concern who would clean it.

Anne was in a room of her own, sleeping off the sedation administered shortly after they arrived. She'd been hysterical, almost unable to speak. The EMTs that met them at the door said words like 'shock' and 'acute distress'. When the doctors learned it was her husband being escorted into surgery with a knife in his gut and his blood on her hands, they'd given her a sedative and decided to keep her for 24-hour observation.

They still hadn't heard anything about Frank yet.

Sam's hand tightened around hers. "I know."

She stared at the scrapes on his knuckles and the patches of gauze nurses had taped over the wounds deep enough to need cleaning. Jess tried, she really tired, to find comfort in the fingers wrapped around hers. She used to love how small her hand felt in his. How long his fingers were entwined around hers. It had been a silly thought, like a little girl daydreaming, but she'd always known the photograph of their clasped hands and a set of matching rings would be her favorite picture from their wedding day.

Sam was suddenly in front of her, crouched at eye level and holding both her hands in his. He was looking at her like she was the only light in his world; a light he'd knowingly extinguished.

"I know," he said again, and leaned forward to press his forehead to hers. Their fingers, still entangled, lay unmoving in her lap. He didn't say anything else; she didn't need him to.

They sat like that until the tears finally came and she sobbed into his chest for everything they'd lost, and what she might lose still.

-o-o-o-

Bobby left a couple hours after Dean did. He told Sam he'd be on call if they needed anything – anything at all – but this fight wasn't over yet and they'd need eyes on the books if they were going to figure out why demons were gunning for them. Sam, who had taken the conversation a few feet away from Jess to try and give her some seclusion from it all, only nodded tiredly.

The old hunter dug into his pocket and pulled out a worn, crinkled business card to hand to Sam. It was for a psychiatrist.

"She knows all about the life," Bobby mumbled with a half shrug. Sam stared at him in surprise for a moment, but he supposed there were people out there – _normal_ people – who learned about the things that went bump in the night and decided to help others without turning into nomadic, revenge-driven hunters hell bent on a life of death and loneliness. And if there were, leave it to Bobby to know of them. "She ain't local, but least they'll have someone they can talk to."

Sam had to blink back the tears that filled his eyes. Usually, he was able to keep it together better, but this really was the week from hell and he tried not to beat himself up too terribly for it. Bobby made a grunt that probably meant 'come here, son' before he enveloped the younger Winchester in a tight hug.

"Thank you, Bobby," Sam whispered and the older hunter clapped him supportively on the back like his father never did.

Bobby hopped a plane back to Whitefish a couple hours later, collected his junker and his dog, and headed back to Sioux Falls and the stacks of books waiting for him there.

-o-o-o-

 _Where are you?_

Sam stared at the screen of his phone, awaiting Dean's reply, as he tapped his foot against the leg of the hospital chair in a move of anxiety, tiredness, worry, and guilt that perfectly summed up how he was feeling internally. Frank had gotten out of surgery an hour ago, and the doctors had thankfully reported he would make a full, but slow, recovery. Jess was in his room now with her mom.

Meanwhile, now that one crisis was partially resolved, Sam had a million more to juggle. Truth be told, over the last five days he'd felt like someone had cut both his arms off, morbidly added them to the pile of things he was supposed to balance, and then stared expectantly.

On top of his brother acting downright weird, demons apparently wanted his girlfriend dead and his head on a stick (or something equally confounding), Jess's parents had been attacked and the family was irreparably scarred for life, the five-day road trip from exhaustive hell had culminated in the realization that Sam was likely never going back to school nor marrying the girl of his dreams, and now Dean had up and left with nothing more than a worrisome text about having a plan to 'fix everything.'

He honestly wasn't sure what was holding back the panic attack and instinct to find a hole, curl into a ball and spiral into madness. Sam had a feeling that dam, whatever it was, was about to break.

Everything hurt, from his body to his soul to his mind.

There was an ache in his heart he couldn't ease up on, knowing as he'd known for days now that this was the end of the road for him and Jess. He couldn't ask her to keep living a life on the run. He couldn't ask her to face death because demons had an unexplainable hard-on for him. And he had no clue how he was going to get her or her family out of it.

He would find a way, no matter what it took. She deserved so much better than this.

But he couldn't deal with that right now. Maybe it was his brother's influence back in his life, but he packed up all the hurt and chaos that came with that knowledge and pushed it aside. Unlike his brother, he _would_ deal with it later, but right now it was just one of the many things he had to fix, and he couldn't work on all of them at once without falling into that spiraling hole of madness he was barely keeping at bay.

So he focused on the Dean Crisis. Well, one of the Dean Crises. Actually, the least troublesome of the multiple crises his brother was currently spawning.

 _Driving to CO text u when I get there_

Sam frowned as his phone buzzed with the reply. Why the hell was his brother halfway across the country? Not to be selfish, but he could sort of use some damn family support right now.

 _Gonna fix it Sammy I swear_

The younger of the Winchester boys let out a frustrated sound as he stared at his phone. Nothing in that text boded well for them. Dean had a martyr complex that could rival a damn saint, only with a fraction of the likelihood of ending up in the Catholic Hall of Fame. God only knew what trouble .he was getting himself into in his effort to bear the weight of the whole damn world alone.

Sam didn't have a clue what had been going on with his brother for the last week, but it was like that weight had increased a hundred fold. Not to mention he was acting as if he'd already failed. Not that Sam knew what it was he could have possibly done, given _none_ of this was his fault, but he knew the signs of a guilt-torn Dean. It was like the brother he had always known, only cranked up to about a thousand and minus the protective mask of crude humor, sexual prowess, and arrogance.

It was baffling, and all Sam could come up with was that Dean had seen something.

As far as the younger Winchester could hazard, Dean's visions were a lot stronger than his own. They had a clarity to them that Sam wasn't getting. His always ended in a pounding skull and a mess of blurry images and leftover emotional stimuli. Dean walked around like he knew the damn future and it didn't cost him a thing.

Well, other than the world's biggest (and heaviest) medal for martyrdom.

Sam was stubbornly ignoring the twinge of jealousy that niggled the darkest parts of his brain anytime he thought of the differences in their new psychic abilities. _That_ was a mini-crisis he would happily lock in a closet and never address again.

 _Hows Frank?_

He sighed, compartmentalized once more, and texted his brother back.

 _Okay. Out of surgery. Why Colorado?_

Sam waited impatiently for his brother to text him back. His foot resumed its tapping against the cheap metal of the chair.

 _Driving text u later_

He had to work really, really hard not to throw the phone at the wall opposite him. Award-worthy hard. His brother was an asshole. Still, Sam could picture the damn grin he had on his face in the front seat of the Impala, glancing at the screen of his phone every couple of minutes, awaiting Sam's bitchface reply.

Despite everything, he figured some things never did change.

The younger Winchester took a deep breath, chose to find solace in that small thing, and texted back exactly what he knew his brother was expecting.

 _Jerk._

 _Bitch_

The speed of his reply only confirmed that Dean had already had the damn thing typed out in expectation of sending. His brother was an asshole. But, one of the things that came with martyrdom was affection, apparently.

Sam closed his phone and decided that crisis, while confusing and probably going to bite him in the ass in the very near future, could be downgraded to orange. He had more pressing red alerts to deal with now.

-o-o-o-

They tried to talk once more, the first night after Jess's dad pulled through surgery. They sat in their borrowed car outside the Moore family home (the blood mysteriously gone from the backseat, but Jess didn't ask and suspected Bobby had something to do with it). Sam drove Anne and Jess back once visiting hours ended. Her mom quietly got out of the car and headed inside, hesitating only for a moment at the door.

Jess looked desperately like she wanted to follow, to support her poor mother who was struggling with the aftermath of trauma, but she stayed where she was. Bobby had already been back earlier in the afternoon while Sam stayed at the hospital, to try and mop up the water and clean the blood off the living room floor. Sam joined him as soon as Frank was declared stable, and helped the older hunter finish the cleanup and secure the house from future attacks. Both men were adamant with Mrs. Moore that no demons were ever getting into that house again.

The water damage was going to need some addressing, but that was hardly her primary concern. She insisted she wanted to go home rather than a hotel.

"I never wanted this to happen," Sam whispered in the silence of the car. He looked at Jess, all the pain and anguish that he'd brought her summed up in the guilt on his face.

She leaned forward, cutting him off before he could stumble through the speech he'd rehearsed a million times since the hallway. Gentle hands cupped either side of his neck and she kissed him across the face. Soft, desperate, sad lips pressed to his own and to his cheek, and his forehead, and his nose.

Jess was crying by the time she pulled away, thumbs stroking across Sam's skin. "I know, Sam. Of course, I know."

He was crying too and he buried his head into her neck.

-o-o-o-

Two days later, Frank was declared fit enough for release and Sam was waiting with Jess at the hospital to drive him back home. She was helping him out of bed and into a wheelchair with the assistance of a nurse when Dean finally showed back up.

He hadn't texted much over the last forty eight hours, obstinately refusing to answer any of Sam's questions.

"Sorry I was gone so long, man," Dean immediately said upon spotting Sam and jogging down the hallway towards Frank's room. He had a rectangular, wooden carrier box in his hands and he looked like shit.

Sam was still pissed, but seeing the dark bags under his brother's eyes, the stress lines pulling his skin tight and the couple days of growth on his chin, he was a little less pissed. He'd done the math; to drive to Colorado and end up back in Boston with the Impala meant Dean had flown to Montana first. Which meant he'd not only gotten on a plane, alone and most likely beating his terrified self up, but then spent almost forty five hours straight driving all over the country.

He looked it, too.

"We're gonna keep her safe. We'll make it right." Dean handed over the box with a firm nod and an air that went past determined and straight into desperation and guilt. Sam added it to the list of things to address when they got around to that whole 'this isn't your fault' and 'oh, by the way, what the hell is going on with you?' talk.

He lifted the lid with no small amount of curiosity at what had driven his brother across the continent. Propped within was an old style revolver. Like, Old West, Cowboys and Indians era revolver alongside five numbered, silver bullets.

Sam lowered the lid with a quick glance around the hallway, before leveling his brother with a raised brow. "A gun?"

"Not just any gun, Sammy," Dean said with a smirk that didn't reach his eyes. He tilted his head in half a nod as he corrected, "Sam."

The younger Winchester eyed his brother and tried to decide if 'he's completely lost it' was umbrella enough to encompass everything that was currently going on.

-o-o-o-

That night, Sam said goodbye to the Moores once they got Frank settled in the house. Anne had gone to town calling floor specialists and her contractor (yes, apparently he was on speed dial in her cell). The new floors were coming in next week, and the current ones had been treated temporarily to stem off further damage. All the susceptible furniture was sent out or cleaned in house. The place was half chaos, half terrifying efficiency and spoke to the frantic, desperate fear lying just underneath the surface.

When he had both of them before him, Anne in a nervous fidget as she cleaned things here and there and Frank sitting tired in a dining room chair, he apologized. There weren't words in the English language to make up for the last seventy-two hours, but he tried. He tried to tell them all of this was because of him, that he'd put them, their daughter, in terrible danger and he'd never meant to. That he loved her, and had so badly wanted to love them too.

Frank grabbed him before he got more than a sentence and a half out and pulled him into a fierce hug, despite Anne shrieking to be careful with his stitches. The older man didn't say a word, just held firm to the Winchester's back. Sam was crying again by the time he pulled away and he wiped at his face as he tried not to break down in front of this family that had faced so much because of him.

Anne placed a gentle hand on his forearm. She hadn't spoken much to him since that night, and he understood why. He could see it in her eyes. Anne Moore was not a cruel woman, but she didn't want him near her family. It hurt to see it, to know it. She tried her best to mask it, intrinsically not wanting to blame her own fear and pain on the young man before her, but she couldn't hide it all. Sam didn't hold it against her.

He'd put her family in danger and would continue to do so if he stayed.

So he told them both that he and his brother had a plan, and that if all went well it was the last they'd see of him. Jess squeezed his hand, her face a brittle mask. Anne started crying silently, but nodded at his words. Frank held out his hand, the kind of serious glint in his eye that meant there weren't words that could be spoken.

Sam walked out of the Moore house with the weight of the world buried in a black hole in his chest that hurt worse than any wound he'd ever gotten hunting. He had really wanted to be a part of their family. More than he'd ever wanted anything.

Dean was waiting for him in the Impala.

-o-o-o-

They were, once more, headed to a crossroads. Jess insisted once more that she come with (Sam hadn't argued very hard: she needed to see this through as much as any of them) and directed them to a slightly less populated area to the north that had a couple dirt roads and fields that might culminate in a crossroad.

Sam went for the spray can in the trunk, but Dean shook his head.

"No trap this time." Knowing that would surely start an argument, he cut it off at the head. "We already ganked one of his demons. He isn't gonna be stupid enough to show up in the center of the crossroads."

"Who?"

But Dean didn't answer, instead getting out the necessary items for summoning a deal demon. He finished off the crossroads box with his ID and a small scrap of paper with something written on it that Sam didn't catch before closing the lid tight and heading to the center of the roads.

Jess waited by the car once more as the boys buried their second cigar box that week.

The wait was quiet and tense, but lacked the same suspense present during their last summoning. Jess, who rightly should have still been freaking out even seven days later, was calm and quiet. Numb.

Dean was a solid rock with the reassuring weight of the colt in his hand. Sam was less sure, but held a stiff, defensive stance of his own. He was ready to take on whatever came at them, fidgeting nervously at the lack of trap.

"You've got some set of balls on you, Winchester. I'll give you that."

The three humans spun at the new voice, an English drawl that was simultaneously lazy and dangerous. To the right of the Impala stood a short, portly man in an expensive suit and crimson tie. His hands were tucked in his pants pockets and he had an incredibly bored expression on his face that masked the indignation and surprise beneath.

Jess immediately moved away from the demon, though he hadn't appeared near enough to her to be a threat. At least, not a physical one. Still, she moved quickly behind the two hunters, much to Sam's relief.

"Crowley," Dean greeted, and Sam looked at him like he really had lost it. "We want to talk with the yellow eyed demon."

"Oh, do you now?" The Brit's eyebrows rose in amusement. He looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to humor the hunter or snap his neck. "Well summon _him_ then, you bloody gnats."

"Yeah, we summoned you."

"I noticed." The demon's voice was dry and his left eye twitched as he looked to the side. He shoved his hands in his suit pockets and Sam got the distinct impression he was trying not to clench his fists. Instead, he let out a dramatic sigh. "Very well. What are you offering in exchange?"

"Oh, you're doing this one for free." Dean lifted his gun, his aim true. "We'll wait."

Crowley's bored expression turned ugly as he took in the gun and immediately recognized it for the Colt. Bollocks. "Any particular reason I shouldn't kill you and the happy couple? Take the shiny toy gun for myself?"

Dean shrugged a shoulder. "You can try, but I'm a quick shot. And I've heard demons have this nasty habit of saving their own skin."

The king of the crossroads regarded the hunter with true, though carefully hidden, bafflement. He'd heard from his own girl that Dean was up on the take in ways they'd never predicted. Azazel had said the same of his brat, but it wasn't like Crowley really believed them. The older Winchester was a mook. An angelic condom mook maybe, but still a mook.

Besides, demons lied. They lied most often when it was their hide on the rack.

But this, this was irreparable proof staring him down the barrel of a limited edition, supernatural-deluxe, Texas Patterson 1836. This was new.

And where the hell had they gotten that bloody gun?

"Hm," he hummed as he exuded nonchalance and a proper air of kingliness. Rolling on the balls of his feet, he considered the hunter's proposition as one would select a fine steak from a butcher. Took his time in doing so, too, just to see Dean's itchy-trigger finger.

The shaking leaf of a thing behind the two men caught his eye and the corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Are you sure you want ole' Yellow Eyes here? Seems to me you haven't thought this through, boys."

Sam's glare turned hostile as he stepped fully in front of Jess. The hammer of the Colt cocked back under his brother's thumb.

"Alright, alright," Crowely conceded, raising his hands placating. "No need to get violent, gentlemen. I'll fetch your Mommy Killer."

If they hadn't had a history – wouldn't have a history – Dean might have shot him.

He lowered the gun as the demon disappeared in the blink of an eye. Turning to Jess, Sam placed both of his hands on her shoulders to reassure himself of her presence as much as comfort her. She was biting her lip and refusing to look at where the demon had been, but otherwise stood strong within her lover's arms. Dean turned away to give them a moment.

Crowley popped back into existence in the center of the crossroads without so much as a confetti bomb. By his side was Azazel, wrapped in the body that Dean would kill him in.

But not tonight.

"You know what this is?" He held up the revolver and pale, yellow eyes trained on it with a look of distaste. Dean took it as the affirmation it was, then tossed the gun to Sam.

Jess screamed as he pressed the muzzle flush to his temple.

"You want me?" Sam asked, eyes never leaving the demon who had killed his mother, who had planned to kill his girlfriend. The creature that had ruined his life twice over. "Then Jess is out. Her parents, her extended family, anyone who so much as knows her name. They're untouchable."

The demon tilted his head, eyes glinting as he evaluated the situation before him with as much curiosity as caution.

Dean held Jess back with an arm, keeping his eyes trained on the two demons. There were so many ways this could go south, and he was going against every protective instinct carved into him over the years by handing his brother that gun.

Because damn if they didn't both want to put a bullet between Azazel's eyes. Dean knew everything he had done, everything he would do. Sam knew enough to want him just as dead. They couldn't, no matter how much they wanted to. No matter how justified they'd be. Tonight had to be about the Moore family; they had to procure their safety. If the brothers killed the bastard now, they'd have an army of demons out for revenge in the worst ways possible. Jess's family wouldn't make it through the week.

For his part, Crowley looked astounded as he glanced between the two parties like a tennis match. It was a damn beautiful sight to be sure and one Dean might have enjoyed in a less dire moment. He'd sure treasure it the next time he had to deal with the smarmy bastard.

Azazel was far more composed, and exuded danger. If he was relying on appearance alone, Dean might be worried he wouldn't take the bait. Those pale yellow irises were daring Sam to pull the trigger, just to see if he would. It was only because the older Winchester knew the end goal that they could even pull this off. Hell needed Sammy alive, but Dean knew he wouldn't hesitate to pull that trigger if it meant saving Jess.

And Azazel knew it to.

Sam's hand was steady even has his legs shook, standing for the first time in front of the thing that he and his brother and his dad had spent the last twenty-two years hunting down. Sam's whole life, summed up in a middle-aged man with yellow eyes standing in the center of a crossroads. "There's no bringing me back from this. So she's out and I keep breathing."

The demon watched for another moment, testing the younger hunter's conviction, before settling back on his heels in a suddenly relaxed stance that gave away how tense he'd actually been. A smile broke across his face, splitting his skin into something foul and wicked. "Alright. She's out."

Sam's finger tightened on the trigger and the demon sighed dramatically.

"And her family too. Don't get your panties in a twist, tiger," he condescended, raising his hands in a mockery of defeat. They quickly shifted to far more dominant position, pointing at the boy with a grand sweep. "But you've got to keep hunting."

Sam's brow furled. The last thing he expected a demon to want was another hunter in the world. Azazel smiled brightly, teeth glinting in the moonlight.

"It's what you were made for, Sammy-boy. Bred for, really."

Beside him, he missed Dean's eyes narrowing. But the demons didn't.

"Fine." Sam lowered the gun, but did not release the hammer. "I want your word."

Azazel raised a brow mockingly at the boy, but Sam Winchester wasn't looking at him. He was looking at Crowley.

The King of the Crossroads was well and truly stumped by the scene unfolding before him. The two dimwitted brothers apparently not only had a significant clue to Samuel's role in future events, but also knew Crowley by name, and had a hell of a pair of balls between them to ask for the demon who'd orchestrated all of this to begin with.

And yes, Crowley was fucking _pissed_ he was being used as a god damn messenger, thank you for asking. He was the King of the Crossroads, god damn it. Some respect would be appreciated.

Now, _now_ , he was staring at Sam Winchester like the moose of a human being (and sweet Jesus what were they feeding that kid?!) had gone and grown two heads.

No. No, that wasn't it. Crowley had seen a human with two heads before. This was far more ludicrous than a genetic freak of nature.

This was bloody insanity.

"What?" he asked, perfectly calm and rather polite given the situation, and not in a shrieking sort of manner at all. Not at all. That would not be very kingly. He raised his hands, quite content to be the messenger. "I've got nothing to do with this."

"You're a crossroads demon, aren't you?"

Crowley bristled at the common label slung about like a meager insult. As if he was just some two-bit salesman. He was the bloody king and he'd earned that title!

Sam's trigger-happy hand twitched on the Colt and Crowley simmered down with a growl and a damn unhappy grimace. The moose didn't let up but he did continue, "You make deals, so officiate this one. I want your word as King of the Crossroads. Jess if off limits, or both our lives are forfeit."

Crowley was speaking before the younger of the two _insane_ hunters even finished speaking. "No bloody way-"

"Deal."

All parties turned to Azazel, who smiled sweetly at them.

"No deal!" Crowley growled back, fisting his hands at his sides as he regarded the demon, now both offended and appalled. The fucking bugger had a lot of nerve. "It's not your bloody life they're asking for. You can bargain with your own damned soul."

"Too late." Sam finally lowered the blasted gun to his side with a grim smile that looked more like death than an expression of victory.

Crowley sneered at all of them, the bastards. With a mumbled ' _bollocks'_ and a hastily written contract that he all but chucked at Sam Winchester's soul, he whisked himself away back to his fortress and his 30 year old Craig. He was owed a good long sulk and perhaps a temper tantrum.

Sam's grip on the Colt tightened when the Yellow Eyed Demon did not leave as well.

He was watching Sam with a gleam in his eye that might have once been pride on the face he wore, but now just looked like malicious delight.

"You know," he began, and though he never moved from the center of the crossroads, it damn well felt like he was circling, "things are turning out far more interesting than we predicted."

His pale irises shifted to look at Dean and Jess. "I wonder why that is."

Then he was gone.

Sam all but collapsed, bending over to brace his hands on his knees as he let out a shaky breath and took in a gulp of air that nearly had him choking. Dean couldn't have stopped Jess from going to his side if he had tried, and he didn't. Sam straightened to scoop her into his arms and press his face into her hair and breathe in the familiar, comforting scent. She was chastising him as much as she was kissing him, and he tried to reassure her with a shaky voice that he was in no way suicidal.

Over her shoulder, he handed his brother back the Colt. The relief of its weight gone from his hand made his stomach clench.

He would have done it. Dean had been sure he wouldn't have to, but that wasn't the point. Despite the comforting words he mumbled into Jess's ear, he would have done it. He was ready to do it. His legs felt like jelly beneath him and he cursed his own fear. He was a hunter, damn it. Death was part of the gig.

Within his arms, Jess turned her head to glare at Dean, who was tucking the Colt into the back of his jeans. "This had better work."

The older hunter stared at her in surprise for a moment, unsure if the venom was coming from the fact that he'd put Sammy in danger with his plan or that he'd put them all in danger by dragging his brother back into hunting in the first place. Or altering the timeline and dragging her family into it instead. There were just so many options to choose from.

"Trust me," he tried to instill as much confidence and assuredness as he could into his words, to promise that her family would be safe from now on. That she would be safe. "Crowley will do whatever it takes to save his own skin."

-o-o-o-

Sam didn't talk on the drive back from dropping Jess off at the Moore home. He didn't say a word as they pulled into the dingy one-star motel parking lot, tiredly grabbed their bags and headed inside. He sat on the edge of the thin mattress on its squeaky frame, his back to the room and the world.

Dean watched from the doorway as his little brother tried to hold it together, staring at the wall. But his shoulders began to shake and his head ended up in his hands.

Dean Winchester had never been good with feelings. At damn near forty years old, he still had no idea what to do with a distraught, hurting Sam.

He could see the same shades of sadness in his brother that had been there once before. This time around, instead of the anger and self-loathing and guilt, there was only sadness. It wasn't great – could hardly even be called an improvement because he had still lost Jess – but Dean knew that it was better.

She would live a full and happy life, even if Sam couldn't be in it. And that difference _mattered_.

His little brother was still walking the path of a hunter, so in a lot of ways nothing had changed. The apocalypse was still set for a five year swing. But Dean was determined not to let that make this small triumph mean less. Because his brother wasn't suffering the same loss and he wasn't sinking into the cold-edged revenge that would define the rest of his life.

A life of pain and hurting that ended in a graveyard and puddle of blood. If things were going to change, Dean Winchester was going to have to do some changing of his own.

So he walked over to the side of Sam's bed and sat down beside him. He might not have any idea what to say, but for once in his life he was going to figure it out.

"I wanted to marry her."

He looked at his brother's hands, and white-knuckled around a ring box, and his heart broke a little on his brother's behalf. He ached for the kid. Dean raised his hand to settle on his brother's shoulder, hesitating and not having a clue what he was doing, but clasping Sam's shoulder all the same. He could feel the tremors just beneath the skin, and gave a reassuring squeeze, hoping he wasn't making it worse.

"It probably doesn't help – Hell, I know it doesn't help. But I think she wanted that too."

His younger brother laughed, the mirthless sound breaking down into a sob that he tried to fight, but lost. He was crying, and damn it all, Dean didn't have a way to fix this. He had always been better at messing these sorts of things up than fixing them.

But he stayed. Sam cried and Dean stayed, and if Time was an oracle you could talk to, she'd have said the future was a little less dark.


	10. Season 1: Chapter 9

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Now we're really getting started. Boys are back on the road, the Apocalypse is rearing, Dean-o's back to swearing, and Sam is not so stupid._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 9

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam threw the last of their bags in the trunk before he slid into the passenger seat of the Impala and closed the door. Dean was already settled in the driver's seat, the engine purring as she warmed up and fought off the incoming chill of the northeastern November weather. It wasn't cold yet, not for Kansas born boys who had experienced winter in almost every state, but it was getting down there.

He held his hands in front of the heater more out of pleasure than necessity. It was unusual for Dean to not have put the car in gear and got a move on, half the time before Sam even got the door fully closed. At least, that's how it had been before he left for Stanford. Who knew with this new Dean.

"Are we waiting on something?" the younger Winchester asked mostly in jest, but when Dean didn't immediately snark back, he glanced to the driver's side with a more serious expression.

"What do you wanna do, Sammy?"

The question, which seemed a complete non-sequitur to everything that had happened in the last five days, had Sam truly baffled. "With what? And it's Sam."

Dean shrugged. "Your life."

The brunette gave a shake of his head, still not following. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about what you want to do, Sam. Do you want to go back to school? Become a lawyer? Dress in green tights and be a literal walking ad for the Jolly Green Giant! Whatever you want; you name it, and I'll get you there."

Brown eyes widened, but his heavy, sasquatch brow furled over them quickly. "Dean, I can't do any of those things," and honestly the last one didn't deserve recognition, "Yellow Eyes said I had to keep hunting. I don't have a clue why or what the hell he wants me for, but if it's the only way to keep Jess safe, then that's what I'm going to do. So…"

He gestured to the windshield and the world beyond in part question and part impatience.

His brother watched him with soft eyes. Softer than he'd seen them in a long time. "Is that what you want? Because if it isn't – if you want to go back to school, we'll figure out a way."

"Dean…." Sam dropped his shoulders and with it came the weight and exhaustion he'd been valiantly hiding. "I don't know what I want. I don't know anything anymore."

It was the truth. He had never wanted to be a hunter, had done everything he could to escape the life. And for a while, he had been happy. Really happy. But that was gone now, and returning to college, to the pursuit of law and a white picket fence with a pretty wife and two point five kids and an expensive car….it seemed cheap. Fake. Hollow as the aching pit in his chest.

He raised his head, jaw clenched but chin firm. "I know I want to keep Jess safe. I _need_ to keep her safe. If hunting is the requirement, then let's go. Let's find a hunt."

"Alright then."

Despite knowing that was the answer the kid would give, Dean had to ask. He had promised to change things this time around, and that meant giving Sam the choice. He wished he could have kept him out of it completely, but Dean was starting to realize that changing the future would not be as simple as deciding who participated in it or not. Destiny wasn't going to be any easier to derail this time around, even if they were tearing up the tracks five years earlier.

So he put the car into gear and turned towards the highway. As they left Boston behind them, he told his brother about a nice little Wendigo hunt he'd caught wind of in Colorado that was calling the Winchester name.

-o-o-o-

"The thing that killed mom was a demon."

Dean looked over at Sam, who had been quiet for last hour or so. The older Winchester wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, or where it was coming from. They'd known Yellow Eyes was a demon for almost a week now – it had been pretty obvious since Brady. Even so, Dean suddenly got the impression he was walking into a mine field.

"Uh….yeah."

"Did you know?" Sam was angry, already rearing up for the answer he most suspected. "Did Dad know?"

Dean's hands tightened on the steering wheel as he thought of all the things John Winchester had kept from his sons. Azazel, his pursuit of the bastard, the truth about Sammy, the deal for Dean's life.

The last words he ever said to his oldest son. A son he had raised to do one thing and one thing only: protect Sammy.

Had John Winchester known all along? Or at least suspected that it had never been about Mary?

If he'd had let his boys help instead of giving them the runaround, would things have gone differently? Dean didn't know, but he wasn't planning on finding out. He and Sam were keeping as far away from their father as they could this time around. At least until Dean worked the whole thing out and stopped what was coming.

"If he did, he kept it to himself."

Sam looked away and tense silence reigned. His anger was lessoning, replaced with confusion and hurt born from something he didn't yet understand. Because truth was, even with Dean keeping something from him – and he could tell it was more than just one thing – he was still his big brother. He was still the kid that had raised him, the man that had come and gotten him every time he'd been lost, and more often than not when he didn't want to be found.

His brother who had saved Jess. Who was still sitting next to him, standing by him, despite everything this week had laid bare.

"The thing we've spent our whole life hunting…and now it's after me?"

Dean didn't answer, and Sam could see the tension in his shoulders. He had an answer, but he didn't want to say it. Dean always looked like that any time Dad took him aside to have a private conversation. A talk that Sam almost always knew was about responsibility. Was about him.

"Mom died in your nursery, Sammy." When his brother spoke, it was hesitant, and he didn't take his eyes off the road. He was trying to soften a blow that couldn't be softened. "I think it was always after you."

Sam grew a few shades pallor as realization hit him like a bucket of lead in his stomach. He had never- it had never- there was no reason before now to think that Yellow Eyes had killed their mom for any other reason than that was just what monsters did.

But now, now Sam couldn't breathe.

"It's my fault she died."

"No!" Dean shook his head firmly, voice absolute. He finally looked at his brother, his eyes fierce. "That's not what I said."

"It doesn't matter what you said, Dean! It is what it is. Mom died because I have a demon after me. Jess almost died because of me." Sam's eyes grew panicked and pained as realization only grew. "It's not going to stop. You, and Dad-"

"Can take care of ourselves."

Sam's hands were clenched against his thighs, and he hardly looked comforted by the thought. The car was silent outside of his heavy breathing and the Metallica track still filtering out of the speakers. When he spoke, there was panic in his voice that Dean rarely heard. A panic fueled entirely by the number of people Sam cared about that were going to fall into the path of this nightmare.

"What does it want from me?"

His older brother didn't know how to answer, so he didn't say anything at all.

-o-o-o-

They stopped for gas and road snacks outside of Scranton (" _They don't serve salads at the Gas'N'Sip, you leaf-eating freak. Eat like a normal person!"_ ). Dean wasn't thinking when he tossed Sam the keys over the hood as they filled up.

His younger brother stared at them, and then him, and then back at the keys. He finally settled an astonished look on Dean. "You're letting me drive?"

The man from the future blinked, realizing that in 2005 it was not a thing he'd do lightly. Even in 2016 it wasn't something he did 'lightly,' per se. He never liked anyone other than him behind Baby's wheel. But he trusted Sam with her.

When he thought about it, he recalled the first time he'd let the kid drive her, other than the occasional lesson when he was younger and the even rarer breakdown following a bout of puppy dog eyes before Stanford. He'd done it because the kid had been damn heartbroken over Jess and Dean needed to do something – _anything_ – to get that cold, expressionless look off his face. Showing Sammy he trusted him to drive her had been it.

He supposed this time around wouldn't be all that different.

"Why not?" He smirked as his brother grinned and ran to the driver's side of the car like a friggin teacher's pet on the first day of school.

Nerd.

-o-o-o-

The second leg of their drive had passed mainly in silence, with the occasional banter started mostly by the older hunter in an effort to keep the younger from sinking too deep into dark thoughts. It was infinitely easier this time around. But now Sam was glancing sidelong at him, and Dean knew he wasn't going to enjoy the coming conversation. "That gun…

"The Colt?"

"How did you know about it? Was it a dream?"

"Nah." For once, Dean was ready. He had his story straight. He'd had almost fifty hours of flying and driving to figure out how to cover his ass this time. And if he felt bad lying to his brother, he reminded himself what the inside of a psychiatric hospital looked like. Because he'd been there, done that, and he was not eager to see where Sam placed time travel on the sanity scale.

"Dad told me. Daniel Elkins – a hunter buddy – had it. He used to be a mentor of sorts for dad. They had a falling out because he always thought Elkins had the gun, but never came clean about it."

"And dad wanted it because it can kill demons."

"Bingo."

"But how'd you know Elkins had it?"

Dean shrugged a shoulder. "Hunch. Dad was pretty sure. The man's never wrong."

He'd even rehearsed that line again and again until he _almost_ believed it like 2005 Dean would have believed it.

Sam was quiet for a moment, giving his brother the stink eye that he was starting to catalogue as Bitchface #12 ( _"What is going on with you?"_ which was really _"I know you're lying to me, future boy"_ without proper context).

"Dad never struck me as the sharing type."

Ha! Sammy thought he could trip him up, but Dean was on his game today. Now he had a _list_ , and this time he was armed with forethought. Besides. It wasn't really lying. Dad had told them, just in another life.

"Beer and a bad hunt, Sammy." He grinned at his brother. "Goes a long way with the old man."

"It's Sam."

"Right."

The car fell silent again.

"How'd you get it from him?" Sam was staring out the windshield with a furled brow. Kid was gonna get wrinkles if he kept that up (which Dean knew he wouldn't, at least not in the next ten years, but seriously, Sasquatch, lighten up.) "If it really can kill _anything_ , that's a powerful weapon."

The younger hunter's words trailed off as realization dawned across his face. He turned his most scandalized bitchface (#10, which was basically just _"Dean!"_ ) on his brother, staring at him. "What did you do?"

"Come on, Sam," he balked, "it's not like I went Liam Neeson on some old hunter with my 'very particular set of skills.'" Sam raised an eyebrow, so he rolled his eyes. "I talked to him."

And he actually had. Sure, there was a threat or two mixed in with the rest of the words, but truth was he'd talked that gun out of Elkin's safe for the second time.

"Right."

"It's true! Bitch."

"Jerk. How'd you know about Crowley?" Sam didn't miss a beat, though he went for a surprisingly nonchalant tone this time as he pulled out his phone and started typing away.

Dean might not know it, but Sam wasn't missing a thing and he'd started a list of his own. Most recently added was the reference to a relatively low-key actor for Dean's usual choice of TV and movie watching. _Schindler's List_ wasn't exactly the older Winchester's genre of choice when it came to pay-per-view.

There was that stint as a Jedi, but the nerd in Sam didn't talk about Episode I.

The limited wifi he got on his phone was telling him Neeson had starred in that Batman reboot that came out last summer. That wasn't only up Dean's alley, it pretty much encompassed the whole damn block, so it was enough to garner a movie reference. Sam hadn't seen it, so he couldn't say one way or the other.

Maybe the drama actor was breaking into action. Weirder things had happened.

He tucked his phone back in his jacket pocket. "King of the Crossroad's a pretty heavy hitter to just summon out of the blue."

Dean winced. Because now he was going to straight up lie, and he was going to do it using the Sam-given justification he really wasn't comfortable abusing.

"That was a dream. Not a good one either, the smarmy bastard."

Brown eyes turned to him, slightly wide. He hadn't been expecting an honest answer, considering most of what came out of Dean's mouth these days was utter crap and they both knew it.

"Really?" He straightened up in the passenger seat. "What was it like? The ones with…." He cut off, looking away from those dreams that still taunted him nightly. "The ones I had back at Stanford. They were…really vivid. They felt completely real, but I had a hell of a headache each time."

Dean nodded, having expected that. "Mine aren't vivid. They play out more like….step by step instructions. Hunting by numbers, heh. Don't get a headache, though."

His brother was watching him like a hawk: gullible puppy dog eyes but a suspicious pair of eyebrows. Dean hoped he was buying it. He'd worked his ass off pre-planning this. And he was really more of the 'shoot first, shoot last, deal with it once everyone was dead' kinda guy.

He thought he was pulling a pretty good act. It sounded natural, or at least it had when he'd rehearsed it over and over again on his way back from Manning.

The problem with all of this, and which had taken damn near the entire drive to talk himself into, was that he had been trying to lie less to Sammy. Ever since the Gadreel ordeal, he'd promised no more lies, no matter what. He'd even managed to be somewhat forthright about the mark and his connection with Amara.

He glanced at Sam, who was watching him with a curious frown. Of course, this wasn't the brother he'd lied to (and been lied to) over and over again for almost a decade of cyclical cause and effect. This was before all that. And, if he could do what he was thinking about doing, maybe those lies would never be necessary in the first place.

Besides, desperate times and all that. You'd think coming from the future would qualify as a special exception.

"Does your chest hurt?"

"Huh?" The older hunter took his eyes off the road long enough to give his brother a confused look.

"You rub at it at a lot."

"No, I don't."

His brother huffed that particular scoff-slash-laugh that was both concern and disbelief. "Dude, you're doing it right now."

Dean looked down to find his hand absently kneading a small, repetitive pattern across his sternum. He frowned, simultaneously removing his hand as if burned, as well as hesitating like it physically hurt to pull away. Despite his brain demanding he rest his arm along the window, the hunter's fingers twitched to return to the warmth in his chest and he ended up fisting his fingers against the edge of the glass as he gritted his teeth.

Okay, maybe Sam had a point.

"Sometimes," he fessed up, though he'd never connected the ache in his chest with his 'dreams.' Probably because he wasn't freaking having psychic dreams to begin with.

It was just…. He wasn't used to the warmth. For the better half of a decade, Dean had walked around with a black hole in his chest, ever sucking, ever hungry, ever unfulfilled. He'd dealt with it and, like any chronic pain, it eventually regulated to something duller, to something that became normal.

Now he had a supernova in his chest.

That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it damn near felt like it to him. He was whole and he was happy. His brother had just broken up with the love of his life, was forcibly dragged back into hunting, and the apocalypse was still chugging ahead right on schedule. But Dean was _happy_. Happier than he'd been since Sam had run off to Stanford, almost fifteen years ago for him.

He'd forgotten what it was like to not be broken, in more ways than one.

The part of him that remembered, the part of him that was still a shattered, ruined soul just disguised in a new, fresh casing, didn't want to be an inch away from that happiness. It needed the contact, the assurance. To feel that warmth and wholeness and goodness and _know_ that it was still there. That it wasn't going anywhere. That it was his, and it was him, and it always would be this time around.

His hand twitched against the window.

Sam accepted his bare-bones admission and didn't push.

-o-o-o-

"I don't know, Bobby." He shifted to push the cell phone against his ear with his shoulder as he pulled back the motel curtains and glanced at the empty parking lot. "It's like he's…older. Tired and bitter and trying to hide it. It's not like him."

Dean was on a food run while Sam started researching the missing hikers in Blackwater Ridge. His brother had cited the need for a ride with the windows down and the music up and no bitching co-pilot. Sam used the opportunity to have an over-due chat with Bobby.

They'd called him briefly outside of Boston to fill him in on the Moores, as well as give someone a heads-up that they were headed to Colorado on a hunt. He'd been damn surprised to hear Sam's continued hunting was a stipulation of the demon's deal (and boy, did the two boys catch hell for that: _'You summoned WHAT? You made a DEAL? You goddamn idjits!_ '). So Bobby had immediately hit the books and the national weather read outs with little to show for it, but a promise to keep digging. Hell was up to something, that was for sure, and someone had to do the legwork to figure out what.

"Four years is a long time, Sam. People change."

The hunter smiled bitterly down at the carpet as he let the curtains go. Like he hadn't thought of that a hundred times. "Some people, maybe: not Dean. Besides, the night he grabbed me from Stanford he was the same snarky ass I remember. And even if that was some weird exception, you've seen him over the last four years. Does he seem like Dean to you?"

He could picture Bobby pulling off his ball cap and scratching at his head. The accompanying sigh confirmed it. "Can't say he does," he huffed down the line. "You sure it's him?"

Sam laughed, but there was little humor in it. "I tried every test I know, Bobby. And he _let_ me. Even recommended a few." Bobby scoffed and Sam chuckled. Yup, that sounded like Dean, despite everything. "I'm not saying it's not him, but either he's something we've never seen before or…"

"Or he's the real Dean."

Sam was quiet as he thought about which of those options he'd actually prefer. It should be an easy choice. If this wasn't Dean, than either his brother was tied and holed up somewhere only his imposter knew or he was dead. There was no way all of this could go down without his brother catching wind of someone impersonating him, not to mention all the demonic activity.

So, it should be an easy choice. But there was a tension to this Dean, a weight and responsibility that went beyond anything Sam had ever seen in his brother's eyes. If this really was him, then what the hell happened that night between Stanford and Jericho to change his brother so much? Dean always blamed himself for everything, always carried the weight of the job and their family and particularly Sam's safety. But this was a whole new level. It was like he was carrying the weight of the entire planet around, and refusing to share any of the load.

"He's different, Bobby. Sometimes he acts like his old self, and sometimes…It's like he's seen the end of the world."

Sam said it half joking, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth the dread that had settled in the bottom of his stomach for a week now roiled around uncomfortably.

"Maybe he has." Bobby's words only confirmed what he was already thinking. "Or something like it. He has those visions of his, and we don't exactly work in a future-friendly industry, kid."

The younger Winchester ran a hand through his hair, frustration warring with guilt and worry, and all of it gnawing at his gut. "Then why hasn't he told us, Bobby? If he's seen something bad and it's coming our way, we need to know."

"Hell, Sam, you know your brother. He's a damn martyr with a guilt complex taller than my house. If he's seen something and there ain't shit to be done…." Bobby trailed off with a sigh and sounded far more tired than his years. "He won't tell us. He'll fix it on his own, or die trying."

And that was it. That was exactly what had been eating at Sam but hadn't yet been put to words. He clenched his jaw, fingers threatening to break the plastic casing of his phone.

"Not this time. We make him to tell us. One way or another. I'm not letting some psychic vision dictate my future."

When Bobby didn't answer, which was an answer all itself, Sam straightened, mind made up and determination setting his shoulders straight and his spine rigid.

"I'm not letting Dean dictate it either."

-o-o-o-

Their first hunt together went pretty damn smooth, if you asked Dean. They even managed to save the asshole guide those kids hired. He'd kind of hoped he and Sam could get in and out of the woods before the sister-brother duo and their douchebag forest man decided on a rescue mission. Alas, they'd shown up the same damn day they had the first time around, something Dean couldn't recall in detail until he realized he was actually living it. Again.

Talk about Déjà vu. The Matrix had nothing on him.

The five of them walked out of the woods with the malnourished, traumatized brother on a stretcher between them. Among the rangers and the EMTs and a thankful family, Sam turned to him and freaking _smiled_. A job well done, four souls saved, two Wendigos burned straight to Purgatory, never to return.

"Maybe we should get some camping gear," Sam was saying as they entered the motel room, planning on collapsing on the crappy beds and thin blankets and sleeping like they hadn't slept in a week. Wendigos _sucked_. "Save money on hotels."

Dean fell face first on the bed, his answer muffled by the questionably stained pillow case (eh, he'd seen worse). He couldn't imagine voluntarily spending time out in the woods. Without internet, or coffee, or freaking TV. No thank you. He would take his motels with their questionable stains, crappy instant make, and never-working ice machines. And then they would go home and he could curl up happily in his room and appreciate four walls and a door more than he had in almost his whole adult.

"That's what the bunker's for, Sammy."

Shit.

"What?"

Shit, shit, _shit_.

Double. Friggin'. Crap. On. A. Friggin'. Cracker.

Now he _ached_ for home. For his bedroom, and his weapon collection, and his war room, and his fully-stocked kitchen with actual home cooked food. His home that wasn't a home in this timeline. It was a sickening realization how much he missed it. The only home he'd ever had. A home that was locked up tighter than Fort Knox with a missing key that _didn't exist_ at this current moment in time, and wouldn't until two thousand and fucking thirteen when it showed up with their paternal grandfather in tow.

Son of a bitch!

The only thing that kept him from rubbing at his sternum was his herculean-strength stubbornness. Well, that and he was currently lying on his chest with no plans of moving for the next nine hours.

"Sorry." He flopped his hand in the direction of his brother, praying the kid hadn't heard him right and that he could play off the whole whiney bitch nickname bit. "Sam."

"No, not that." The sasquatch titled his head to the side. "I mean, yeah that, but the other thing. What did you say?"

"I said shut your blasphemous mouth," he lied like his life depended on it, growling and lifting his head off the pillow to glare at his giant of a kid brother. "I'm riding the high of a successful hunt here, Sam. Don't ruin it with talk of freezing the family jewels off just to take a piss in the middle of the night. I'll keep my crap motel and it's equally crap indoor plumbing, thank you very much, you tree-hugging hippie."

Sam was watching him in amusement as he unpacked his bag and Dean declared his runaround a success. He collapsed back into the pillow with a sinfully delighted groan and set about achieving that goal of not moving for the next nine hours.

When his brother started snoring, Sam Winchester opened his laptop, pulled up a mislabeled document sent to himself from his phone, and wrote down ' _bunker'_ next to ' _Daniel Elkins'_ and ' _Cass'_.


	11. Season 1: Chapter 10

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Bloody Mary in her Bloody Mirror Time! Crowley's back for a bit, Alistair makes a surprise appearance (it's not as exciting as it sounds), and a certain demon joins the playing field._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 10

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean remembered Bloody Mary. He remembered most of the Urban Legend cases pretty well. One, because they weren't your run of the mill case and they always made for good stories later. And B, they were more often than not a bitch to figure out.

The key to this Mary had been a mirror. He remembered Sammy had summoned her because of some big secret that got Jess killed (and yeah, looking back now, it was obviously the visions he'd been having) and she'd come after him from the mirror she died in front of or something.

Problem number one: Dean knew that secret now. So she wasn't going after Sam. Which kind of messed up the whole 'step ahead of the rest' thing he had been rocking on their other hunts. In theory, being from the future should be damn awesome when it came to hunting. It should make him the most badass hunter around.

Problem number two: It wasn't and it didn't because he wasn't _alone_.

He had to walk on eggshells about everything around Sammy, and everyone else for that matter. Dean couldn't just go to Mr. Yamashiro's antique shop (he'd yellow-paged it as soon as they got to town) and cut the bitch down. He wouldn't be able to explain how he knew where to go with no research or what the bitch was without digging. So he lied, and he bluffed, and he led their witnesses as much as he could as fast as he could without his brother realizing he already knew the information he was trying to get out of them.

Their other hunts so far had been easier to fake his way around. Half the time they had to wait for specific timing anyway to even use his fancy future knowledge mojo. But this one, he knew where the damn mirror was and how to gank the ghost before she killed any more innocents.

But he couldn't go to it.

For the whole damn case he found himself cursing Cas's name again and again. Twenty-four hours earlier, and he wouldn't have to beat around a thousand bushes. He knew, now, that it wouldn't have truly mattered. Nothing he could have done would have kept Sammy out of the hunting life, twenty-four hours or whole months. But damn it, sometimes he needed to think he could have. That Sam would be at law school with Jess and Dean could go waste this bitch without jumping through hoops, lying to his little brother left and right, and claiming psychic dreams when that didn't cover it all.

As if having psychic dreams wasn't already the biggest damn lie.

His whole life was becoming a never-ending web of deception. Dean knew – knew too well – where that led. It led to a prophet and a kid and a friend, dead in the bunker with his eyes burned out of his head.

God knew (and Hell and the Pagans, and everyone else in the friggin' cosmos) that he couldn't keep this up forever. Not without making all the same mistakes he'd come back to fix.

"So you think she's killing people who summon her with a secret?"

They were in the Impala, driving to Estate Antiques in Toledo while Charlie Patterson sat at home with all of the mirrors in her room covered. Dean had remembered too late who the other victims were, and they'd lost her friend, Jill, to the pissed off ghost. Now Charlie was next on the list. If he didn't have to play a thousand questions right now, he could have saved the bitch prom queen, and the terrified teen holed up in her house wouldn't have PTSD for the rest of her life.

He seriously wanted to punch something. Luckily, they were on their way to a store with a lot of shiny, breakable objects.

"Not just any secret: one where someone got killed." Dean pulled onto the street the shop was located on. Yep, this looked familiar.

Sam gazed blankly out the window as his thoughts inevitably turned to the dreams he'd been having before this all started. The ones he'd ignored that had almost gotten Jess killed. Because of his brother she was still alive, at home in Boston recovering with her parents from an ordeal he was sure the family would never fully get over.

"So what secret aren't you telling me that got someone killed?" Dean pulled into the parking lot outside the store and got out of the car without answering. Sam followed, leaning over the top of the car to watch his brother who was watching the building. "Come on, Dean. I know you're going to summon her; it's written all over your face."

"We should check for an alarm." The older hunter was frowning up at the sign above the store. "I got a bad feeling about an alarm in there."

Annoyed, Sam moved around the car to stop his brother before he could advance on the antiques shop. "Seriously, man. When are you going to tell me what's going on?"

Dean finally looked at him and grinned that cocky, broken smile that was always his tell when he had a lie he couldn't hide but would die before he gave up. "Wouldn't be much of a secret if I told you."

He proceeded to the door, pulling out his lock picks and Sam followed after in a huff.

A few minutes later and Sammy was calling out that the alarm system was down (Ha! He was totally right. The cops _had_ shown up the first time around. Score one for future Dean!) and the two got to work on finding the ghost's stupid mirror in a shop full of stupid mirrors. It wasn't quite the needle in the needle stack Dean grumbled it was, but it still took a fair bit of time to spot the one that matched the newspaper clipping on Mary Worthington's tragic death.

"Dean, over here." The older hunter joined his brother, who stood in front of a mirror that perfectly matched the one from the photo, right down to the whole creep vibe.

"Yep, that's it." He pocketed the clipping and held out his hand for the crowbar.

The beanstalk of a man passed it over reluctantly. "You sure about this?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "What, you got someone killed recently I don't know about?"

Hurt and indignation fought for control over his brother's face, before he settled on the one that was far easier to express. "And you have?"

 _'Not yet.'_ Inner Dean muttered deep within his own mind. Aloud, he rebuked more caustically than necessary and rolled his eyes. "Secret, Sam. It won't be much of one if you keep asking."

Dean started the summoning before Sam could rebuke. He spoke the first two names steadily, but paused before the final call to cast a final _'here goes'_ look at Sam. His brother rolled his shoulders and raised the flashlight across the dusty surface of the mirror. "Bloody Mary."

The two stood in silence, one with crowbar raised and ready for a homerun swing, the other an unwavering light on the reflective surface, just waiting for the ghost of Mary Worthington to show herself.

There was the inhale to his left, slow and shaky and screaming creepy ghost woman. Dean spun, but it was only his own reflection watching him in the many mirrors that surrounded the two hunters.

"Dean!"

"I know, I know, stay on her friggin' mirror." Another breath sounded and he swore he could feel that one on his skin. He spun again, crowbar kept tight to his body so he didn't swing the thing into Sam. Still, only their own reflections stared back.

"Where is she?" Sam's eyes darted to the other mirrors, snapping back to Mary's when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. But there was nothing there. "Dean, do you see her?"

The older Winchester didn't answer, and Sam cast a worried look his way. His brother wasn't moving, standing stalk still in front of a mirror, staring at himself like it was the very ghost they were hunting.

"Dean?"

"No. I won't," he whispered, breathe catching even as he did and that was all Sam needed to round on the mirror his brother was standing on front of and smash it to pieces with a couple hard blows with the butt of the flashlight. Dean broke out of his trance and stumbled back.

"Shit, Sam, the mirror!"

"She wasn't in it!"

Dean turned to find the source reflection but drew up short at the sight of himself ten years from now. No. Not ten years. More like eight and an apocalypse later. So much more like 2014 Dean, who was cold and hard and bitter and sent his best friend and his crew to their death for a god damn distraction. A Dean who had lost his brother to the Devil.

Green eyes stared at him with such hatred, such disappointment that it took his breath away and sent pain shooting through his head like a physical blow.

"You're going to get them all killed."

"Shut your mouth."

"You're nothing but a screw up, Dean. You and me? We only know how to make things worse. The whole world's gonna burn, and this time it'll be all your fault."

"Shut up, you son of a bitch! I'm not you!" He charged the mirror with the crowbar and, in a show of excessive force, sent the frame tumbling backwards to crash into another mirror, cracking that one on the floor.

"Dean!"

"Find her, Sam!" He stumbled with a gasp, putting a hand to the side of his head. God, he had a killer headache. He heard his brother smash a mirror, and then another, calling out to Mary, daring her to go into the one they needed. But Dean couldn't focus. His head felt like it was swimming in a damn punch bowl. He fell to his knees and the crowbar clattered to the ground.

He clutched at his chest. His heart was racing like a friggin' freight train. Pain laced through him on every slamming beat and he felt something warm and thick sliding down his cheek. Shit.

"You're going to hell, Dean." The hunter's breath hitched and his head shot up, pain arcing across the inside of his skull to shoot down his spine. His reflection towered over him, staring down on him in disregard.

His eyes were pitch black.

"You're going to hell, again. And this is what you're going to become."

Blood soaked fingers dragged his sleeve up, leaving red streaks across his skin like a sick finger painting: a trail that led straight to the mark of Cain. It burned hot and angry on his forearm.

"N-No…" Dean couldn't look. He dropped his head and watched blood drip to the floor beneath him. Crap, this was so not going to plan.

Sam's flashlight went through the mirror, shattering Demon Dean and raining shards of glass on the collapsed hunter. The flashlight hit the ground with a clatter and the younger Winchester left it, abandoned, to grab Dean beneath his arms. He hauled him back and away from the mirrors as glass clinked and cracked in their wake.

When they were a couple feet to safety, the sasquatch bent down and hauled his brother up with an arm wrapped over his shoulder. He didn't make it a yard before he heard glass crunch behind them. The hunter glanced back over his shoulder, body tense and spine rigid.

Mary Worthington was climbing out of her mirror like something out of a nightmare. Only much, much worse because this was very real.

"Shit!" Sam muttered, dropping his brother on the ground with a grunt as he dove for the abandoned crowbar. If nothing else, it had iron in it.

His hand had just wrapped around cold metal when he felt it. The blood rushing to his brain, the pain filling his head like a cup soon to overflow. Sam tried to keep his grip on the weapon, tried to raise it to the ghost straightening up and stalking towards him and his brother. He could feel the blood leaking from his eyes, could feel it filling his nose and throat.

"S-Sammy," he turned, but it felt like it took a lifetime. His brother was staring at him from eyes squinting past blood and pain. He was trying to point at something. "Mir-mirror. Use a mirror."

Sam turned back to the ghost, feet dragging across the glass-scattered floor. She had a jagged piece in hand, clenched around a bloody fist and poised to kill. He looked to his left, where an intact mirror was lying on its side. With a deep breath, he grabbed at the thing and struggled to hold it up, praying to God that they could turn her vengeful justice on herself.

Because if not, they were screwed.

Mary choked on her own screams and cries of sin, clawing at her face to hide from whatever it was she saw in the mirror's surface. She writhed and bent in on herself, folding into impossible tightness before she collapsed into nothing more than a pile of blood.

The pain immediately drained from his head and Sam fell to the ground. He wrapped his hand around the crowbar once more and proceeded to smash the mirror to pieces.

Dean stumbled to his feet and made his way to Mary Worthington's mirror. He kicked it hard, nearly losing his balance. The mirror fell to the ground, cracks spiraling through it and breaking the smooth surface.

"Bitch," he muttered as he turned around to look at his brother. He slid to his knees, wincing at the glass biting into his legs.

Sam huffed out a laugh, sitting back on his heels and looking at the destroyed shop around them. "This has to be at least a century of bad luck."

"Just what we need." Dean laughed, stopping to spit out a mouthful of blood, but laughing all the same.

That was, until they heard the sirens in the distance.

"Shit," the older of the two muttered, pushing himself up again and grabbing his brother to help him stand. "Someone must have heard the showdown."

"We weren't exactly subtle," Sam chuckled back, grabbing the crowbar and the flashlight as they raced out of the store. They had to take anything that might have their prints. But damn, was bending over a bad idea in his current state.

"You know how to smash a mirror _quietly_ and didn't tell me?"

He grinned at his brother as they hobbled as quickly as two people covered in blood and nearly dying of an aneurysm could. Neither should probably be driving, but it wasn't like they had much of a choice. Dean put the Impala into drive and the two hauled ass away from Estate Antiques before the cops showed up.

-o-o-o-

They were pulling off the main highway and into the hotel they were camped at for the night when Sam started the conversation he knew his brother would fight tooth and nail to avoid. The older hunter turned to him expectantly as he put the car in park. There was still a streak of dried blood across his left cheek and the corner of his eye, despite his best attempts to wipe at his face with the sleeve of his jacket.

"Dean, who is it you think you got killed?"

Dean Winchester stared at his brother, honestly debating what to say. He knew what he had to say, but it wasn't what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell him the truth. Or at least, he didn't want to lie to him again. Didn't want to cause that look in his eyes when he thought his big brother didn't trust him.

But he didn't have much of a choice and it looked like time was damn determined to repeat itself in some ways no matter what he did. It friggin' sucked.

"No can do, Sammy." He gave a weak-ass smile. The one that said he knew what his brother wanted, but couldn't give it to him. "If I told you, then I'd have to kill you."

Sam looked pissed at him making light of it, but it was a misdirect that would keep him from digging deeper, at least for now. He certainly adopted that expression that said he knew Dean didn't trust him. But he didn't say much, just settled back with a full grown man's pout and indignantly insisted, "It's Sam."

"Course it is."

-o-o-o-

The masses of Hell would be muttering and whispering for weeks. Something was up. Something was coming. Two meetings by the powerhouses of Hell in less than a week, and not one of them had tried to kill the others. It was unprecedented.

And none of the three aforementioned leaders of the Underworld were happy about it.

"He knew my _name_. They summoned me by my bloody name!" Crowley was spewing in his anger, red faced and hair out of place from constant tugging. He had been pissed as soon as he and the barmy yellow eyed bastard returned to Hell.

Azazel, far more calm and composed, had suggested an emergency meeting with Lilith. She brought along her top torturer, much to the displeasure of everyone involved.

"And then, to top it off, this bastard agrees to my head on the chopping block!" The King of the Crossroads thumbed at his companion, as if the motion itself could somehow stab Azazel through the heart and rip his life force out to roast on a spit.

He was just a little displeased by current events.

"Quit your whining, Crowley." Alastair looked at the other man with great displeasure and more than a little disdain. The day to day dealings of Hell and Earth were below him. He had humans to be breaking; his talents were far more needed elsewhere.

The crossroads demon sputtered and the purpling of his face promised both retribution and possible self-asphyxiation. Whichever one happened first. "Whining? 'Whining,' he says!"

"Enough." The gathered men turned their attention at the powerful command coming from such a small body. Lilith regarded them all like idiot children she hardly had the time to discipline. "Clearly, Dean Winchester is getting information from _someone_."

"There's been no movement at the gate." Azazel was as calm and indifferent as always. Perhaps that was why their Father had picked him to start everything. "It's not Heaven."

"Then a pagan," Lilith supplied, looking less than pleased. While it was a far better situation than the cloud-hoppers, she hated dealing with those primitives. "We anticipated the lesser deities taking offence at us ending the world."

She said it so casually. Crowley might have found entertainment in that, if he wasn't still boiling over (and rightly so, might he add). Of course, the best part was that she was missing the most likely category of saboteur to their little party. The category he, himself fit into when he wasn't busy playing his part as an officer in the Apocalypse Club.

"Or a demon." Alistair seemed unaffected by the treason he so easily suggested and Crowley resisted glaring daggers in his general direction. "A traitor would benefit greatly from the power struggle a coup would cause if Lucifer fails to rise."

The little girl and current Queen of Hell balked. "A coup? You're suggesting some demon thinks _hunters_ can stop us? Let alone kill…who? Me? Azazel? You? Don't make me laugh, Alistair."

Crowley had to use all his not insignificant self-control to ignore the way she casually passed him over on that list. Oh, he could not wait for the day the Winchesters put this bitch's head on a spike. He might even offer his services. Perhaps he could suggest a few targets for that new gun of theirs.

Hell's top torturer just shrugged. He could care less what happened. Whether Lucifer rose or not, he would get to continue his work and that's all that mattered to him. "You've underestimated the Righteous Man once before, look where that got you."

Lilith seethed through gritted teeth and small fists. She spun on Azazel, who regarded her with little change in expression. "Pull your girl off of John Winchester. Get someone else to track him down. I want her saddled up to Dean and finding out who or what the hell is helping him."

The yellow eyed demon shrugged in acquiescence. His eldest was the best of his children, and Dean was a serious demotion for her skills. But arguing with Lucifer's First was useless when she was like this.

He had little doubt his daughter would wheedle her way past the obvious holes in the hunter's defenses in less than a week. Finding someone else to get to John would be a challenge, though. He was a resourceful human, capable of giving even Hell's best the slip. If she was having trouble finding him, it was unlikely any of his other children would fare better.

As the meeting broke up, Azazel pondered an option he had not previously considered. He hadn't needed to. But it looked like their timetable was speeding up, and that would require more…aggressive planning.

Perhaps it was time to take a page out of Dean Winchester's book. There were more than a couple pagans and monsters with skill sets far more suited to tracking than a demon's.

-o-o-o-

Over the next couple of weeks, the brother's fell into an easy routine. Find a hunt, kill the monster, rinse and repeat. Sometimes rinse really, really, really well. God, Dean had not needed to relive the bug curse ever, ever again.

He'd been worried at the beginning – damn near gave himself a panic attack actually – about not following their steps exactly as they had the first time. What if they missed hunts where they had saved people? What happened to those souls this time around? And how screwed up could he make the timeline before he started seeing consequences? What was one life, versus stopping the apocalypse?

The nightmares generated from those questions alone were enough to keep Dean up most nights.

It happened on occasion. Of course it happened. The older hunter couldn't remember every hunt they'd been on, try as he might, and some he could remember the monster or a memorable moment, but not enough of the important details to track the case down. Especially when, more often than not, he couldn't recall when or where it would happen.

They'd roamed the country last time, checking news articles and obituaries and making their way hunt to hunt. There was no way to say which newspapers they'd picked up, which town they were in when they found their next case. He tried to go by instinct, but in reality it was a fucking guessing game and there was nothing he could do when he got it wrong.

The lack of déjà vu was always his first clue.

It sucked how badly he hoped for it now, how he started the mantra in his head when they entered whatever nameless town was in need of saving. A silent, repeated prayer, begging for the trippy sense of familiarity to start any second now. Because going without it meant they'd done something different this time around. It meant innocent people they were supposed to save were going to die instead.

It was another drop in the cup of changing the future and Dean wasn't sure how full that cup was, or how much it could hold from the start.

The older hunter never knew what monster they had missed or where he'd messed up (had he skipped a local newspaper? Decided to turn left on the highway when last time he went right? Had he distracted Sam with some inane joke right at the moment the kid would have found the hunt?) He lived in complete paranoia the first week after the Wendigo as they looked for their next gig. Eventually Sam threatened a mutiny over driving rights and a trip straight to Bobby's for a break and possibly a head check if his brother didn't calm the hell down and relax.

Luckily, Sam seemed to think it was the whole 'demons want my little brother on a silver platter' anomaly causing the odd behavior.

So Dean caved and forced himself to let whatever would happen, happen.

Besides, if Time wanted so badly to walk the same road, then it could deal with the cleanup whenever Dean fucked up.

Right?

-o-o-o-

He knew the second she kissed him that she wasn't human.

She was gorgeous. Never-ending curves and full breasts, everything just barely contained in the sinfully tight jean skirt and cut off top that perfectly fit the dive bar they were in. She even had the cowboy boots that screamed 'kinky.' Sex was clearly on the menu tonight, and up until she'd locked lips with him, Dean had considered ordering the full course meal.

He'd never kissed a demon hiding behind the face of a human before: only the crossroads demon, and he'd known what he was getting himself into with that one. The background taste of sulfur in this demon's mouth was unmistakable, though, and stomach-turning. How the hell Ruby talked her way into his brother's bed tasting like that, he'd never know.

They managed to play it cool. He signaled to Sam that something was up in the same line he used to invite the woman back to his place. Sammy rolled his eyes appropriately and didn't bother watching them leave with her draped over his brother like silk. They made their way out of the bar and started the block and a half walk back to the motel. He stalled for time using every other walled-surface as an excuse for heavy groping, selling it hard.

Next gas station they stopped at, he was buying out their supply of mouthwash and toothpaste.

Sam was already in the room when they stumbled in. She was stripping Dean of his jacket when he stepped out from behind the door, a bottle of holy water in one hand and the _Key of Solomon_ in the other.

"Shit." She didn't even try to deny it as Dean took three hasty steps out of the devil's trap spray-painted into the crappy carpet. Yeah, their fake credit card was definitely getting charged for that one come morning.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand but it did little to chase away the foul taste still clinging on his tongue. The bitch crossed her arms, borrowed face full of disbelief, anger, and amusement all wrapped up in a smirk that was eerily familiar to Dean. He didn't recognize the woman playing host, and it was kind of hard to tell demons apart by facial expressions alone. They pretty much all had the same basic personality, bought on discount at _'Evil Villains and Cliché Monsters Co.',_ just ratcheted up to different levels.

Sam started the exorcism and the woman sneered.

"How'd you know?" She directed her question at the older Winchester with a hint of a smirk. The demon was clearly pissed, but in a calm sort of way that screamed 'cat' in the canary-who's-about-to-get-eaten scenario. Which put Dean on edge, considering he and his brother were definitely supposed to be the cats here.

He got the uncomfortable feeling that he had, in fact, met this demon before.

"You taste like sulfur, bitch."

She laughed, even as she choked on her own black essence.

-o-o-o-

"Why would demons still be after us?" Sam let out a frustrated noise as they packed up and hit the road, not daring to stay overnight in a town where demons had found them. Dean climbed into the driver's seat, wondering if he still remembered the ingredients for those Hex bags Ruby always gave them. With the bunker proofed seven ways to Sunday, it had been a while since he made one. "I thought we had a deal. I'm hunting!"

The older brother just shrugged, less surprised and far less concerned about Hell being on their six. It was kind of expected, actually. "Deal didn't say anything about them leaving us alone. Just Jess. Besides, whatever Yellow Eyes wants you for is big. I'm not surprised they're keeping an eye on us."

Sam looked less than happy at that.

-o-o-o-

It was in Indiana they caught trail of a skinwalker, or what they thought was a skinwalker. Dean wasn't sure as nothing memorable was coming up about this hunt. They'd have to see what John's journal said, since he was pretty rusty on the monsters.

"Wait," Sam pulled up short on their way back to the Impala. Surprise was written all over his face. "You have Dad's journal?"

"Yeah, it's-" Dean stopped. Because it wasn't in the trunk. He'd done inventory back in Stanford and again before they left Boston for the wendigo hunt. Its absence hadn't occurred to him then but it sure as hell did now. He thumped his fist on the roof of the impala and resisted the urge to swear like a sailor.

Dad's journal was in a box in the evidence locker of the Jericho Police Department.

 _Son of a bitch!_

-o-o-o-

"This is a terrible idea."

"For the thousandth time. Shut. Up."

Dean stretched his arms up as far as he could, flashlight held between his teeth, as he worked the edge of a knife under the sill of a second story window of the JPD.

Okay, so this was a terrible idea. Breaking into a police station was easy pickings for Ten-Years-From-Now Sam. But Fresh-Out-Of-College Sam lacked the confidence and still held enough sanity to realize breaking into a building full of cops was _a really terrible idea_. Which made him a horrible breaking-and-entering partner.

Technically, Sam wasn't breaking in. Dean was. His gargantuan brother was just acting as support. Six and a half feet of it.

"Are you sure this is how we did it in your dream, Dean?" the whiney moose whined, wincing as Dean purposefully dug his heel into his giant shoulders.

"Just shut up and lift, Sammy. I've almost got it."

"It's Sam."

Dean was gonna kill him. Right after he covered his loud mouth in duct tape.

"Right. Sam. Short for Sam-fucking-amantha. The whiniest bitch in all of-" The latch lifted with a click and Dean broke out in a grin. "Aha! Got it!"

He hoisted himself up, reveling in his young, strong muscles. Dude, growing old sucked. He wiggled his way through the narrow window.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief as his brother's feet finally left his sore shoulders. He was going to have bruises. He watched Dean pass through the window, shoulders then torso and hips. Suddenly, he disappeared altogether with a crash and a muffled yelp from the other side of the wall.

"…Dean?"

A hand waved floppily at him through the window. He heard another crash and several expletives as Dean made his way out of the supply room.

This was a terrible idea.


	12. Season 1: Chapter 11

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _- **A/Ns** : __GUYS WE PASSED A HUNDRED FOLLOWERS! How cool is that? More than a hundred people are reading this story. That's awesome :) Thank you each and every one of you! I hope you continue to enjoy and offer up requests, suggestions, critique, and feedback as we continue on our epic journey of 'Messing With Dean as Much as Possible'!_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Our Mystery Beast makes it's first appearance, the boys contemplate their existence in this timeline, Azazel is being a dirty rotten no good demon, and Dream-Cas gets his fishing on._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 11

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Crowley was done. He was beyond done with everything. Not only was he now an unwilling participant of the Apocalypse he'd spent years planning to avoid, bound by contract in his own damn trade, but his talents were once more wasted playing the friggin' messenger. Again.

Letting the whole world burn was looking more appetizing by the minute.

The King of the Crossroads scuffed the toe of his favorite Italian leather shoes against the dirt with more force then necessary. He'd have his tailor buff those clean when he got home. Someone deserved to suffer his indignation.

There was a rustle to his left and he huffed. _Finally_.

A beast emerged from the forest, massive paws pressing down lose dirt and sticks and leaves. Fiery amber eyes regarded the demon as the thing settled on its haunches.

"Tokorum," Crowley greeted with a nod of his head and no mention of how the damn animal was two hours late. "Pleasure as always."

"You're a terrible liar, Crowley." His voice was a rumble that rolled across the demon's awareness. He resisted the shiver that started at the base of his neck and crawled down his spine. Damn telepaths.

"I am a _fantastic_ liar. I'm just not putting in any effort." He pulled his hands from his pockets. Pleasantries exchanged, it was time to get down to business. Thank Satan. "We have a task for you."

The fur along the thing's back rose as it bristled. His trunk swung to the side in indignation. "I am not your servant."

Crowley clenched his teeth. Good God Almighty, was he ever done. "It's a paid task."

The beast settled almost immediately. The old ones were always so much testier, and Tokorum was a right bastard compared to most of his kind. Crowley had not been thrilled to be the one dealing with the thing. But, as Azazel pointed out, he had the most history with the creature.

Yay for him.

"What is the payment?"

"Ten souls."

The words had hardly finished passing his lips when Tokorum countered. "One hundred."

Crowley balked. At first, because he thought the beast was joking. And then again when he realized that was not the case. He stared at the thing in both shock and disgust. "Well, aren't we greedy," he mocked, eyeing the enormous monster from head to tail. "Perhaps you should reconsider, darling. You're starting to get a bit chubby."

The growl was a physical one, and it rumbled through the earth as paws shifted in agitation across the ground. Crowley hardly batted an eye. Tokorum did not scare him in the slightest.

"Damned souls are not as good."

The demon rolled his eyes. "You don't even know what the job is."

"No job is worth only ten."

"Yes, well, damned souls are more expensive. Less of them, you see." Crowley gave a grim smile, the one that said 'don't negotiate with me, I'm the bloody king, sweetheart.' "Fifteen."

"Seventy-five. I must insist, _Fergus_."

It was the demon's turn to growl low in his throat. It was a warning that the beast would not survive the meeting much longer. Hell and its plan be damned.

Fucking telepaths.

"You know what?" Crowley suddenly brightened, straightening with a wide smile. "I'm in a generous mood." Mostly because he wanted this meeting to be over as much as the damn creature. "Let's call it an even fifty, and I get to rip your heart out and feed it to your prey if you ever use THAT BLOODY NAME AGAIN."

The creature's curled ears twitched at the volume change. Crowley released a deep breath, straightened his tie, and regained his demonic composure.

"What is the task?"

That was more like it. "We need John Winchester. Alive and _whole_."

"No."

Crowley gave it more than a few moments thought before he decided that burning the entire woods to the ground would be a touch dramatic. People would probably talk. So instead focused his rage into a sharp huff.

The dumb beast did not seem especially grateful that his life was being spared by Crowley's self-control.

"A hunter like that has a reputation, Crowley, one that spreads quickly. We have avoided the attention of such men for centuries by _not_ calling for their attention."

"You don't need to approach him," Crowley answered with a roll of his eyes. "We'll handle that. We just need to know _where_ he is."

The beast regarded him. But the demon could already see he had won. He always could, especially when it came to the desperate or greedy. And Tokorum was certainly one of those things. After a moment, the creature gave a nod and rolled his head and shoulders to the side as he moved back into the forest.

"I'll be hearing back from you shortly, then?"

The beast paused, looking back over his shoulder at the king of the crossroads. His amber eyes conveyed his annoyance at the falsely sweetened condescension, as had been the intention.

"It will not take long. Everyone sleeps eventually, even hunters."

-o-o-o-

Dean sat in the passenger seat of the Impala, staring at the leather jacket in his lap. His old leather jacket. Well, his now.

It had been in a second evidence box next to the one he'd gone looking for at the Jericho Police Department. He knew the cops would eventually find the hotel room, even without the brothers to accidentally tip them off to it. But to be honest, he'd forgotten about his Dad's jacket.

He'd missed that thing.

Sam watched his older brother as he stared down at their dad's jacket like it was a bomb rigged to blow at the slightest jolt. He really had no clue what was going on with him, but he was pretty much at wits end about it.

"Let's find him." His brother looked up as Sam stared expectantly at him. "We need to find him, Dean."

That seemed to jostle the older man out of his morose thoughts and he leaned forward to finally pull the thing on. It felt good to wear it again. "No, we gotta keep hunting. Demon say so."

"What do you think Dad's doing?" Sam balked, incredulity and frustration growing on his features. "He's hunting, and we can help. We need to help. Hell, we probably know more about the yellow-eyed-demon at this point than he does!"

"Don't count on it," Dean muttered under his breath. He could still hear John's words, pressed against his ear, the last thing he ever said to him. Kill Sammy. Yeah, fuck going and finding John Winchester. The man knew plenty and had never shared it with them.

Besides, if there really was any hope of saving him then Dean and Sam needed to stay away. That's how the demons had caught him the first time, it was how Azazel got to him the second time, and it was the reason he ended up in Hell after all of it.

Nope, John was safer if they just stayed the hell away. And so were they.

"Look, we don't even know where he is. His cell's still off. Last we heard he was here and he's clearly not here anymore. Trail's gone cold, Sam. So drop it." Dean gestured emphatically for his brother to get them back on the road. They had places to be and none of them were Jericho, California.

Sam's jaw was clenched tighter than a dog with a bone, but he turned the key in the ignition (maybe a bit harder than necessary, to Dean's chagrin) and pulled back onto the highway.

-o-o-o-

They still saved people. People that maybe hadn't been saved the first time around.

The skinwalker in Indiana was definitely off-menu once they got to it. Dean would have remembered a guy posing as an alligator in the sewers and a Sasquatch in the woods just out of town in order to draw some tourism and help generate income for the small bookshop his girlfriend ran on the main drag. Apparently, the store specialized in tales of urban legends and fictional beasts.

The brothers ended up letting that one live once he proved he wasn't the one mauling people to death. Turned out? Actual rabid dog. That shit never happened for real.

So much so that, for a while there, Dean was looking for candy wrappers at the crime scenes.

They did manage to save a pair of kids from an ugly end and put the unfortunate pooch down. Couldn't get the older girl out of the six painful rabies shots to the gut, though. She got her arm munched on protecting her baby brother from the dog before the hunters showed.

Dean gave the kid mad props.

Other cases were more familiar. They managed to avoid the entire 'I'm not a sadist and a murderer' shapeshifter fiasco by catching the freak before he had the opportunity to knock Dean out. That case he sure as shit remembered. Which was _GREAT_ ; emphasis on the all caps. He didn't have to imagine how many times he _wouldn't_ be asked if he was the same Dean Winchester from St. Louis.

You know. The dead, rapey one.

The déjà vu itself was weird as hell. Sometimes he could tell you exactly what was about to occur, but in a fuzzy, dreamlike way that gained clarity only right before it happened. He'd saved himself a nasty cut to the shoulder from a werewolf by remembering a second before the swing to friggin' _duck_ this time _._

Other times he repeated the same course of action, no matter how rotten his gut felt or how hard he tried to recall why. In Twin Falls, he'd tripped over a dog, tangled himself in the owner's leash, and ended up with a black eye courtesy of a lamp post after having _appreciated_ a woman walking past. He hadn't remembered that happening until he saw Sam laughing so hard he was crying. Yeah. That part he recalled perfectly.

Sometimes, the same shit happened no matter how hard Dean avoided it. They'd caught the Hook Man case again, and he remembered the Pastor's daughter being the cause. But the same people still died, despite burning her silver cross necklace two days sooner. This time around, the Hookman worked on an accelerated schedule, like what had happened was supposed to happen, no matter what the brothers did to change it.

Dean wanted to find Time and punch the bitch in the face.

She could at least be consistent. She could, you know, not give him hope that things could change – that they could save people this time that hadn't been saved, that he could stop the apocalypse from happening, that he could stop Sam from dying – only to yank it away in a single hunt that showed Dean he really had no control at all.

He cursed Cas's name over and over again because he could. The guy could have at least left him with a manual or something. Some friggin' instructions for this crap. A whole chapter on self-help entitled 'Yes, You Can Change the Future' would be good by him.

The worst bit about being from the future, though, was being with Sam. Don't get him wrong; it was great – fan-freaking-tastic, actually – to see his kid brother again, lighter than he'd been in a decade and years before the various rifts that would drive them apart and back again. Some days Dean forgot when he was from and what he had to do. Some days he just enjoyed the drive, the banter, and the life.

But letting his guard down meant forgetting that he wasn't the Dean this Sam knew. That this wasn't the Sam he knew, or at least not the most recent Sam that he knew.

It meant mentioning things that Sam hadn't yet lived through. Like that time they'd caught that lucky rabbit foot case and his kid brother had been a _literal_ walking disaster.

Only, Sam had no idea what he was talking about, and Dean had to awkwardly scramble and play if off like it had been Garth. Because who wouldn't confuse the mouse that was Garth Fitzgerald the IV with the Moose that was Sam Winchester. The two were just so similar.

He couldn't police what he said all the time, though. When he tried early on, he didn't last the day before he was so exhausted and frustrated that he ended up mostly tongue-tied any time he tried to speak. Sam had eyed him worriedly, to which he'd finally snapped. When the epic rant (that had made absolutely no sense to either party and was mostly just grunts and wordless yells) finally finished, his brother told him to stop PMSing, Dean called him a bitch, got a jerk in return, and that was that. Dean decided he'd just get by saying whatever came to mind, as usual. He'd be no good to the future if he spent all his time _thinking_.

So he slipped up. A lot. Sam's Bitchface #12 became official in Dean's count. The younger Winchester used it. A lot.

The older brother categorized the look as the most monotone of bitchfaces, and although it had several sub-versions of _'what the hell is wrong with you?'_ , _'I don't know what you're talking about,'_ and _'Where are you getting this from?',_ the most base expression boiled down to _'you are lying to me.'_

Dean hated that face.

On top of all that, he was pretty sure his brother was keeping a list of his own. He'd play on his phone or pull out the laptop as inconspicuously as possible, especially when he thought Dean was asleep. The older hunter couldn't be sure (he hadn't managed to find the file yet and Sam seemed to police his electronics a lot more carefully than he remembered) but he knew his kid brother. And suspicion always led to sleuthing. Which meant keeping lists.

There was crap that he could do about it, even if he did find whatever Sammy was always writing down. It wasn't like he could delete it without raising more suspicion. And trying to address it off hand would go about as well as sneaking out of the motel room with clown shoes on. Dean wasn't the most graceful when it came to subtlety.

Besides, even with Sam being far from stupid, there was still only about a 0.1% chance in hell that 'time travel' would be among the theories he came up with.

Instead, there was just a growing tension pervading their brotherhood. It was a tension he was uncomfortably familiar with. Which royally sucked, because damn it, this was supposed to be before all of that. Back when they were just brothers, before the lies and the distrust. Sure, it wasn't nearly as negative as it would be in the future ( _wouldn't be_ , Dean reminded himself, _you're going to stop all that_ ) but it was still there.

And it sucked.

-o-o-o-

"I want another go."

Azazel glanced sidelong at the voice bubbling up through the goblet of blood on Amanda Stutson's white and pink dresser. She was six months old today, sleeping peacefully in the crib beneath him. Her mother was still choking on her own life liquid, ever weakening fingers clasping at her slashed throat as she leaked impressive amounts of blood all over her daughter's pristine carpet.

Really, white in a nursery was just asking for trouble.

The yellow eyed demon gave little Amanda's cheek a soft stroke and big brown eyes sleepily opened. Her daddy had unwittingly sold her humanity to him seven years ago exactly in exchange for a successful climb up the company ladder and a soon-to-be-dead wife far too pretty to actually be interested in him.

"Get me topside, and I'll get you Dean Winchester."

Azazel regarded the goblet with distaste. His daughter may be his creation, turned by his own blade and trained from the moment she'd taken the knife under her hand, but that didn't mean much more to a demon than pride.

And right now, he was not feeling particularly proud.

"You didn't last an hour with them."

He could picture her face, charred and twisted with the very essence of evil that had warped them all, scrunched into something pissy at his words. He could hear it in her voice. "Dean's definitely on the take. I don't know who's feeding him information, but it's in real time."

Azazel raised an eyebrow at that. If that information was right, it severely limited the number of things that could be assisting Dean Winchester. There weren't many creatures that could speak and not be seen by a demon.

A psychic perhaps. They hadn't considered human involvement as the wrench in their plans. But if some upstart psychic saw what was coming and decided to change it….

A powerful psychic like, say, a prophet?

"Did he say how he knew?" He rolled up his sleeve, smiling down at the baby who was beginning to wake up, kicking her little feet and starting a fuss. She must be hungry. He would help with that.

"Said I tasted like sulfur." Her father's skeptic silence was question enough. "I'm pretty sure he's full of shit, but considering he tasted like righteousness…."

Azazel chuckled lightly at her disgust and held his wrist out over the crib, digging his nail into his skin hard enough to slice through the fleshy meatsuit.

"I can still get to him," his daughter insisted once more, blood bubbling with determination. She had always been a stubborn thing. He'd liked that about her the minute he'd dug his blade into her soft belly.

"How?" Little Amanda blinked in shock when something warm splashed onto her lips and chubby cheeks.

"I'll go through Sam." When he scoffed, she continued, "Worst case, you get to find out if he's in on it too, or if it's just Dean. But I don't think he is. And I'll get to them through him."

Azazel did not immediately answer, instead watching Amanda's little tongue slide out experimentally with the lack of coordination that came with still growing muscles. In the face of his silence, his daughter's stubborn hold-out caved to begging. "Just get me topside, and I'll get you what you need."

Amanda began to cry as the metallic tang bit at her tongue and she tasted evil.

"Fine. I need the Colt."

The silence that followed from the goblet spoke volumes as to what he was asking. On the other end, trapped in Hell and desperate to once more escape, his daughter hesitated. A human reaction that had not been carved completely out of her. Should she fail again, he'd have to correct that mistake.

"Okay," she agreed reluctantly, voice bolstering with determination he knew she did not feel. "But one thing at a time. Sam Winchester first."

"I'll find you a gate." With that, the blood silenced and settled. Amanda was kicking up quite a fit now, and Azazel heard the telltale sounds of a waking father in the hall.

"Honey? Is there someone in there with you?"

The demon stroked the infant's cheek, swiping up the missed blood and painting her lips red with it. Looked like little Amanda would be growing up an orphan.

-o-o-o-

Dean was fishing off the dock in the mountains again. He was halfway through his first beer and his line hadn't caught anything yet. That didn't usually happen until after Cas showed up.

"We need to talk."

Speak of the angel.

Dean looked up at the man, haloed by the sun as he always was when he first appeared by the hunter's side. Sometimes he wondered if Cas did it on purpose, or if that bit was all him. Giving an angel a halo of light.

He snorted. There was something wrong with his head. Really.

"Dean."

"So talk," he bit out, looking back out at the lake. He still remembered his last dream with Not-Real-Cas and the way the angel looked when he asked why he had let the devil in. So nonplussed, like the answer was obvious and Dean was just another stupid human too small to comprehend.

Just thinking about it pissed him off.

Castiel was silent long enough for Dean to get even more annoyed. He refused to look at him – at what his mind had summoned up as his best friend, because the guy next to him _wasn't real_ – but he knew his friend was staring at him with that hurt look on his face, and he didn't want to see it. He was the one who was hurting, he was the one who deserved answers here. Not Cas.

"You need to be more careful. The changes you're making, they will not go unseen." Dean didn't answer, instead focusing a morose and angry glare on the line sunk into the lapping water. He waited for the inevitable tug. "Dean, I am serious. The demons have already taken notice. Meg was just the first."

The hunter straightened in the camping chair, finally looking at the angel.

 _Son of a bitch._

Of course it was Meg. He'd known that stupid smirk and bitch attitude. How had he not picked up on that sooner? No, he had to wait for his brain to figure it out and tell him via Fake-Dream-Cas-Chat. He must be more of a masochist then he thought to keep putting himself through this shit.

"What am I supposed to do then, huh? You didn't leave me with much to go on, Cas!" He stood up, leaving behind the pole and fish to face the angel. They'd always been the same height, but every time he got into Castiel's personal space the angel had a habit of somehow looking up at him. Like Dean had more than even odds at being the stronger of the two.

It should have been his first clue when it was Lucifer wearing those eyes.

Dean turned away, fists clenching.

"You are angry with me."

"Hell yes I am, Cas!" He spun back to his best friend, gesturing between the two of them with his hand. "You and me? We're not okay, and we're not going to be okay until you can tell me why you let Lucifer ride you for weeks. Explain it to me in a way that this stupid human can comprehend!"

Castiel frowned at the hunter. He didn't need to ask what it was he should be explaining.

"You are far from stupid, Dean." The man considered punching the angel in the face for yet again avoiding the question. But he didn't have to. "I needed to be…useful."

Something inside the hunter lurched at the words. It was something angry and it was something hurt.

"What?" Dean waivered, staring at the angel who looked no bigger than a man. "No, seriously, _what_?"

Castiel shifted, uncomfortable, and Dean was suddenly flooded with cold. Like a bucket of ice water being poured over a pleasant memory. This, this felt too real. All of a sudden, he was no longer dreaming. This was him and Cas, and something was trying to claw its way up his throat and choke him.

"Cas…Why doesn't this feel like a dream?"

The angel gave him a sidelong look – one of his old, fierce ones that told him to stop asking questions.

"You need to be more careful, Dean. The waves you're making, they are getting too big." The angel took a step forward, forcing the hunter to counter with a step back, lest they be all but pressed together. And two dudes didn't do…that.

"This plan- Hell's plan, Heaven's plan, _my Father's_ plan- it has been in motion for a millennia, and written in stone for far longer. You cannot stop following the script without those who have read it a thousand times noticing your alterations."

Dean swallowed heavily, staring into those piercing blue irises. "Then what am I supposed to do, Cas?"

The angel watched him, eyes darting back and forth between his own. "You must let some things happen, Dean. Somethings must stay the same."

The hunter wet his lips nervously. He could feel the warmth of Castiel's body so close to his own. Could feel the ends of the trench coat brush against his jeans in the breeze. Something….something wasn't right here.

Castiel had never given off warmth as an angel. Vessels were always oddly cold.

"Cas," he breathed and he swore the angel swayed closer. "Are you really here?"

The angel put a hand to his chest and something in Dean flared for a moment, so brief he wasn't sure it had happened at all. So confusing he was sure he made it up. Then Cas pushed and Dean was tumbling backwards into the water.

-o-o-o-

He woke with a gasp, hand to his chest and lungs telling him not to breathe because it would be a mouthful of lake he inhaled. The hunter still choked, despite being in a hotel room, sitting upright in bed and definitely not in the water surrounded by fall leaves and fish.

Sammy was sitting in the bed across from him, legs over the side and a scrap of paper gripped his hands. Dean let his breathing calm down to manageable levels before he even attempted to speak. His brother beat him to it.

"Did you have a vision?"

The older hunter wanted to groan. God, he was sick of lying to Sam, and he was even more sick of hearing that question. "No," he answered, chest still heaving and fighting valiantly to sound normal. "I…I don't know."

Because what the hell had that been? For a second there…he'd sworn he'd felt Cas. The angel had been there, in his head, like the good old days. But that wasn't possible. It wasn't.

 _'Cas?'_ he whispered the prayer, sending it upwards with a thought of the nerd angel and heaven. ' _Castiel?'_

Nothing happened, and Dean tried not to be disappointed. Of course it hadn't been him. He was ten years in the future, lying dead in a graveyard. Right next to Sammy.

"Dean?" He looked over at to his little brother, who was very much alive despite the slightly ashen pallor of his skin. "I had one."

That got the hunter's attention, and he straightened up, hand falling from his chest. "A vision?"

Sam nodded, fingers tightening around the paper in his hand. No, not paper. A picture.

"I think…I think we have to go back home. Back to Kansas."


	13. Season 1: Chapter 12

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Our episode-iest episodes yet. Dean's still swearing, Sammy's getting fed up, and Missouri Moseley never changes 'cause some things have to stay the same._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 12

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean needed time to think.

How was it possible he'd bought himself ten years of borrowed time, and still he needed more?

He remembered the case. How could he forget? It was one of the hardest cases he and Sam had ever worked, solely because it was so damn personal. It was his mom. And it all started with a solid crack straight through the foundation of his entire world view. It was when black and white, supernatural and normal, human and monster, turned grey.

And smack dab in that new grey block was little Sammy.

Overwhelmed hadn't quite covered Dean's emotional turmoil that day.

This time around wasn't going much better. He hadn't wanted to go home ten years ago, when he'd promised himself he would never set foot in that town again. He didn't want to go home now, not after he'd kept that promise going forward. They'd never gone back to Lawrence, Kansas.

At least, not without dick angels sending him there involuntarily thirty years in the past (and then voluntarily, but almost dying to do it – _'weakened' my ass_.)

That town did _not_ have good memories. And Dean did not feel particularly inclined to try his luck at making new ones.

He swallowed, but his throat was dry and there was nothing to go down. Sam was watching him, a storm building that he didn't have the radar capacity to see coming.

"Dean, did you hear what I said? I'm dreaming about our old house. That's where it all started, right? That has to mean something!" Sam was standing, body tense and agitation coursing through him like a drug. Dean couldn't split his brain power between watching his brother pace like a caged animal and figuring out what the hell he was going to do.

"I know, I just….I need a minute, okay?"

He just needed half a second to think.

"What do you mean, you need a minute? That woman might be in danger, Dean. I mean, this might be the Yellow Eyed Demon, the thing that killed mom!"

Dean couldn't breathe. He didn't want to go home; he didn't want to see Mary's ghost, didn't want to see his mom again, just as he remembered her – his last memory of her – only to lose her once more. Didn't want to see her on fire, burning. He just needed a minute to figure out how to breathe again.

Sam dropped his arms, staring at his brother in disappointment and irritation. His teeth ground against each other as he looked away, hurt flaring into indignation. "You know what? You can do whatever you want. I'm going back to Lawrence and I'm saving those people."

He grabbed his jacket on his way out, throwing the door open and not bothering to shut it.

Dean swore, taking half a moment to throw a hissy fit before he scrambled off the bed and after his brother. Damn it, what the hell had crawled up Sammy's ass that he couldn't give him five minutes to think through just hopping in the car and driving back to the one place he had no intention of ever returning.

Sam was almost past the Impala by the time Dean caught up to him and made a grab for his arm. The taller man spun and Dean, instincts screaming, immediately let go and took a step back. Sam was half a move away from punching him, body language screaming the hit was incoming. He kept himself in check but just barely, and Dean raised his hands in a truce.

"I'm not gonna stop you, Sam. But can we at least pack up the damn car first?"

Sam glanced at the Impala, to the boxers and t-shirt his brother was clad in, to the hotel room door still open behind them. Shame at his impulsive behavior tinted his cheeks red. He looked away, still angry as hell, but a little guilt-ridden too.

"Yeah, alright."

"Okay." Dean dropped his hands and his brother pushed past him to re-enter the motel in the early morning light. The older Winchester let out a rough sigh, tugging at his hair.

 _'Guess you get your wish, Cas_. _Guess some things are staying the same.'_

-o-o-o-o-

In the car on their way to Kansas, in a silence that had reached the peak of tension between the two brothers, Dean finally cleared his throat. "It's not 'cuz of your visions."

Sam had been waiting and immediately snapped in response, "I know that I don't have them as often as you do, but that doesn't mean they're not important – that they don't mean something."

The way he spat it out made Dean's stomach turn. Because that was his little brother, hurting and angry that Dean was treating him like a kid. Hurting because he felt like his brother didn't take him seriously.

Hurting because he wasn't as _good_ as Dean.

The older brother had seen it over the years, when Sam struggled to pick up target shooting as well as Dean had. When John would take Dean on a hunt and leave Sam behind because he wasn't ready yet.

When John gave Dean the Impala.

It had taken him years – roughly another four from this point in the timeline – to realize that his brother was often jealous of him and hurting that, in a family of hunters, he just didn't belong. It had been baffling when he'd finally seen it (when Bobby had finally hit him over the head with it, really). Because Sam was amazing. He was a genius, and kind, and good. And Dean…God, Dean wasn't any of those things.

He was nothing to be jealous of.

Sammy wasn't supposed to _want_ visions. And he certainly wasn't supposed to be jealous of Dean having them too. Damn it, lying about having psychic dreams was supposed to make things better, not worse!

Sometimes he wondered if Time was just standing aside, watching Dean shoot himself in the foot repeatedly and getting a kick out of it.

"That- that's not- Sam, I know they're important! And the people you see, we're going to save every one of them. It wasn't…It wasn't the visions." Dean swallowed. He chanced a glance at his brother, who was watching him intensely. "I don't want to go back. I promised myself I'd never go back."

In a moment, Sam deflated. He was still angry, and that wasn't likely to change anytime soon, but his older brother rarely sounded so vulnerable. So honest. "We have to save that family."

"I know." Dean nodded firmly, fingers tight on the steering wheel as he watched the road pass by. "And we will. Just…give me a break, alright?"

Sam didn't answer, but he didn't argue either.

-o-o-o-

They got into Lawrence too late to knock on Jenny Richardson's door – on _their_ door. So the two hunters found a motel on the outskirts of town to bunker down and catch some sleep for the night.

Sam was on the bed with his laptop out, watching his brother triple check their arsenal with the efficiency of a hunter dreading the hunt.

"You haven't seen anything, have you?"

Dean paused in his dismantling of his Remington 0870 sawed-off to look over nonchalantly. "Nah, nothing recently."

Sam saw his brother's arm move towards his chest, only to stop as the man noticed what he was doing and resume his maintenance of the gun. He wondered if Dean realized it was a tell.

"When are you going to stop lying to me, man?"

His brother sent him an offended glare. "I'm not lying to you, Sammy."

"It's Sam. And yes, you are. You're not even good at it!" He swung his legs over the bed, sitting up and setting his computer aside. "I'm not stupid, Dean. You're different; you have been since Jericho. If you saw something-"

"I didn't see anything, Sam. And I am not different."

Sam's face twitched in a humorless smile. "Where's your necklace?"

Dean froze, and Sam could see him swallow from across the room. "What?"

"The amulet I gave you the Christmas you told me the truth." The younger Winchester's gaze bore straight through every lie his brother hid behind. "It's never _not_ been on your neck for fourteen years, Dean. So where is it?"

Damn. Dean had hoped Sammy wouldn't notice. He should have known better. But the minute he'd seen in, that first night at Sam and Jess's apartment….he hadn't been able to stomach the sight of it. Of what it represented. Of the god it would never find, who didn't give a crap when they tried. The dead beat dad who abandoned his kids and called it a lesson

Just didn't feel right on his skin anymore.

So he'd stashed it in his go-bag and hadn't thought of it since.

"I've done every test imaginable to make sure you're you. But you're not _you_." Sam stood from the bed, but didn't approach his brother, who was refusing to look at him. "I can't help if you won't talk to me!"

The older hunter opened and closed his mouth half a dozen times, but the truth was he had no clue what to say. God, he wanted to share the load. Doing this alone was killing him. He needed someone to talk to. He needed his brother.

But he couldn't.

Some things had to stay the same.

"Fine." Sam let out a huff and shook his head. He turned in for the night and the tension between the brothers got worse.

-o-o-o-

The Impala sat outside the old Winchester house.

Sam glanced at his brother, at the tense hands still wrapped on the steering wheel despite the cooling engine. At the tense posture and the occasional, harried glances at the house through the corner of the windshield.

"Dean-"

"Don't, Sammy." Dean swallowed heavily and shook his head. "I can't. So just don't."

"…You gonna be okay, man?"

It was an olive branch. Dean reached for the door handle and forced himself out of the car.

"Ask me again when this is over." He slammed Baby's door harder than he meant to, and gave her a brief brush of his fingertips in apology before crossing the street with his brother and heading for the house where everything in their lives had first gone wrong.

-o-o-o-

Jenny was just as warm and friendly as he remembered. And just as hurting, stressed, and scared by the thing plaguing her house.

Sam took them through the motions, and Dean didn't say much until the woman mentioned the clogged sink.

"Don't call a plumber."

Jenny blinked, and both she and his brother looked at him questioningly. He cleared his throat.

"Uh, don't call a plumber. We'll- we'll take care of the sink for you."

Sam's eyebrows reached for his hairline, but Dean shook his head. They had a lot better chance of not losing an arm than the guy she'd call in.

And he sort of recalled a liability battle the poor woman had to fight, so they might as well save her from that as well.

-o-o-o-

"You hate handy work," Sam said as they left the house much later that day than they had first time around. Dean was wearing someone else's dress shirt that didn't fit him, which Jenny had handed over with a look of such heartbreak that the hunter almost told her wearing his soaking wet one would be fine. "And where did _you_ learn how to fix a sink?"

Oh, sometime during the year he'd spent playing house with an incredibly patient woman and her awesome kid in an attempt at an apple pie life he could never really have.

"Shut up," he grumbled as he opened the door to the impala. "There's a poltergeist in the house. Really don't think we should introduce _more_ civilians for it to eat. Do you?"

Sam stopped, staring at his brother from across the hood of the car. "Poltergeist?"

Dean stared hard at his brother. God, he was tired of lying, he was tired of having to worry about lying, and he was tired of slipping up all the damn time and trying to back pedal out of it. He was just tired.

"Sari said it was on fire. A figure on fire, Dean. That doesn't sound like a poltergeist."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't sound like a demon, either. And that's what killed mom." He opened the door and slid into the car. End of conversation, check please!

Sam didn't have a response to that, so he climbed inside the car after his brother. "We need to get them out of that house."

"We will."

"No, now, Dean!"

The older hunter closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the Déjà vu added to his irritation. He didn't know what to do. He didn't even know what he wanted to do, let alone what he could do. Because so far, all the normal cases had been pretty easy. Either suck it up and bide his time, or start changing things.

This wasn't a normal case, he had no idea what he would even change – what he should change – if he could change anything at all. It sucked so badly.

"What would we do if it was a normal case?" He asked the question aloud, but he was asking himself more than anything.

Sam stared at him like he was crazy for a moment, before he sagged. "We'd work it, dig into the history of the house. Find out what happened."

Dean nodded, turning the key in the engine. "Then that's where we start."

His little brother was quiet as they pulled away from their old house. But he looked at his older brother and softly asked, "Does this feel like a normal case to you?"

He was so sick of hearing questions he'd heard before. Like a broken record on repeat, with ten year skips. Unsure of what he said the first time around, he didn't say anything at all. It was becoming his new default response.

-o-o-o-

They stopped at a gas station to use a phone book to find the garage their dad used to work at. Dean remembered he'd been a mechanic, but he couldn't recall the name of the shop.

Sam left him to it, telling him he needed to make a bathroom run.

As he rounded the corner of the gas station towards the bathrooms on the side of the building, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the second speed dial. He checked over his shoulder to make sure Dean was still at the phone booth.

"Dad?" He faltered slightly, realizing he had no clue what to say. He was sort of winging it, here. "Dad, it's Sam. I'm with Dean and we're in Lawrence, back…back home. I think there's something in our old house, and I think it has something to do with Mom's death. If, uh…If you get this, get here. Dean could really use you, Dad. He's taking it pretty rough..."

He hung up and headed back before his brother suspected anything.

-o-o-o-

"A palm reader? Do you know which one?"

Dean was trying really hard not to swear up and down like a sailor as his brother talked with their dad's old shop partner. Because shit if he knew what he was going to do about Missouri Moseley. He'd be lucky if that hellfire of a woman didn't oust him on the spot.

But some things had to stay the fucking same, didn't they?

Especially since the second he suggested he not tag along with Sam, that maybe he go check out other leads, he got the angry, don't-you-dare version of Bitchface #12.

God, he hated that face.

-o-o-o-

Dean shoved everything he was thinking deep, deep down in his head when Missouri came into the sitting room that served as the little foyer for her business.

She grabbed Sam's hand, and the sasquatch listened in amazement as she asked about their missing father and expressed her condolences for his recent breakup. She turned to Dean next, and he withdrew physically as well as mentally, letting no part of himself within reach of the psychic.

Missouri narrowed her eyes at him, regarding him curiously. "What is it you don't want me to know, Dean?"

Sam's expression flattened and Dean stubbornly refused to look at him. "Can we just get on with what we came for?"

"What did you come for?"

Dean glared at the woman. He'd never liked Missouri, mostly because she didn't like him and he took some offense to that. Yeah, he knew he was fucked up and anyone with access to his head probably wouldn't like him very much either. But she didn't have to take it out on him as publically or humiliatingly as possible.

"You're the psychic, aren't you?"

Missouri's eyes narrowed dangerously and she took a step forward, forcing Dean back like a terrified colt. "Boy, you see me sawin' some bony tramp in half? You think I'm a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies but I can't just pull facts outta thin air!"

Dean reared back. How the hell had he stepped in that one _twice_?

The plump woman turned back to Sam, smiling gently. "So, you're father's missing and there's something in your old house?"

Dean gave up entirely when he got yelled at for _not_ putting his feet on the coffee table _again_.

-o-o-o-

Standing in the destroyed kitchen, holes punched through walls, knives sticking out of cabinet doors, and a heavy silence reigning over the household, Sam turned to Missouri and asked her if it was over. If she was sure. There was worry etched on his features, alongside something else. Dean had seen that expression before, so when Missouri said she was sure, Dean already knew she was wrong. And when his brother expressed doubt, he agreed with him this time.

It changed nothing.

Jenny came back with the kids and kicked them out of her trashed house as politely as possible, Missouri headed home, and Sam and Dean still ended up camped outside the house in the Impala to wait for the worst so they could break into the house without scaring the crap out of the woman or having her call the cops.

"Did you feel it too?"

Dean glanced at his brother, who was watching the house intently. "No. But I trust you, Sammy."

Sam met his gaze, saw the same olive branch he'd offered that morning now handed back to him. He gave a small nod, and they were good.

Not great, but good.

Then Jenny was at the window, banging on the glass and screaming for help.

-o-o-o-

Sam went after the kids and Dean went to get Jenny out of her locked room. He could smell smoke and fire, and he feared the worst. But he still grabbed the panicking woman around her middle and hauled her downstairs, trusting his brother to get her kids.

He stopped at the threshold of the front door, remembering taking an ax to it a lifetime ago. Remembering it as a barrier between him and his brother; a barrier he'd rather be on the other side of this time around. Jenny turned to him, panic warring with fear.

"Go! Jenny, go!" Dean pushed her through the doorway and turned back into the house as Sam came down the stairs. He was setting the kids down and looking behind him.

Sari grabbed her little brother and ran even as Sam's legs went out from under him and he hit the floor hard.

"Sammy!" Dean dove past the kids, grabbing at his brother. He missed by inches as Sam was dragged away from him, pulled by an invisible force. "Shit!"

The older Winchester scrambled to his feet, only to have a force like a sledgehammer hit him square in the stomach. He flew backwards with a pained grunt, straight through the front door. It slammed shut as he hit the concrete below the front steps.

But never let it be said Dean Winchester didn't roll with the punches. He was up and on his feet, using the momentum of the toss to make the whole thing look like one badass _Assassins Creed_ move, running full speed for the trunk. That's where they kept the ax.

 _Sammy'll be fine. We all lived through this last time. He's fine. He's fine_.

It was an ongoing mantra in his head as he took the stairs two at a time, launching the heavy weapon at the door with the last stride.

 _He's fine._

Swing. Crash. Splinter.

 _He was fine last time._

Swing, crash. Kick, splinter. He reached through to try the lock and went back to hacking away at the door when the dead bolt made no difference.

 _Time wants to stay the fucking same_.

Still gripping the ax, he barreled through the barely intact door, screaming his brother's name as he headed for the kitchen on instinct.

 _You better be fine, Sammy_.

His brother was pinned to the cabinets. He knew, despite seeing it many times in many different places held by so many different things, that he had seen exactly this before and almost sagged in relief.

Sammy was fine. He'd be fine. Because some things wouldn't change.

Dean took a chair to the head before he'd finished the thought. Splintered wood rained over him as he crashed into the cabinet beside his brother. Dean slid to the ground, dazed. Sam tried to call his name, choking on the pressure pressing down on him.

Well. He was pretty sure that was new.

The hunter let out a surprised cry as something wrapped around his legs and pulled him from the kitchen, down the hall and back towards the damaged front door. Oh hell no, he was not taking that stair case in a flying leap again. He knew how freaking lucky he had been not to break something the first time, _Assassin_ or not.

Dean raised the ax with a struggle, slamming it into the ground with as mighty a swing as he could manage while being dragged across the hallway on his stomach. The blade dug deep and he held on for dear life as the Poltergeist tried to dislocate his legs at the sudden stop.

Light lit up the side of his vision, and he turned his head. The force holding him dropped, and his bottom half hit the ground with a thud. He could see fire in the next room, flickering just beyond his line of vision.

 _Mom_.

Dean scrambled up, struggling for a moment to free the ax from the half foot drag-line he'd buried it in. Jenny wasn't going to have much of a house left when they were done. He slid into the kitchen as his brother cried out, "Wait! I know who it is…I can see her now."

His face was lit with the flickering light of her flames.

Green eyes slid to the figure even as the fire raged and warped and swirled itself out of existence, leaving only Mary Winchester in her nightgown, staring at her boys. Dean swallowed past the lump in his throat.

Ten years hadn't healed a damn thing that twenty-two hadn't already tried and failed.

"Mom," Sam whispered, watching her in awe and amazement even as he remained trapped, crushed against the wall.

She smiled gently at him, pride and happiness fading into sadness, into regret. "I'm sorry."

Dean couldn't breathe. Because this time, this time he knew what she was apologizing for. For making the deal, for selling her child to a demon to save her husband, to get her apple pie life. For not protecting him that night, for not stopping Azazel. For leaving them. For starting everything to come that even she did not know.

Mary turned her back to her boys, standing protectively in front of them.

"No, mom, don't," Dean whispered, taking a step towards the ghost. Because there had to be a way to kill the poltergeist and still save their mom. She shouldn't have to sacrifice herself for them. Not again.

May looked at Dean over her shoulder and smiled so sweetly at him, so happy to see him grown and safe and good. "I love you." Her gaze flickered to Sammy. "I love you both."

She turned back around, flames engulfing her as she told the thing threatening her boys to get out of her house. The fire flared, licking at the ceiling before encapsulating it and burning out to nothing.

The house was silent, the poltergeist and Mary Winchester both gone.

Dean slid to the ground as Sammy collapsed, heaving for breath now that his lungs could fully expand. He looked at his older brother, but neither knew what to say.

-o-o-o-

Sam sat on the front steps, watching Dean assure poor Jenny that it was really over. Despite their reassurances, he was pretty sure she'd be selling the house and moving as soon as possible. Rough re-start.

Missouri sat down beside him with a deep sigh.

"What did you sense from my brother?" The questions wasn't unexpected, at least not for the psychic. The tension between the two of them didn't require supernatural powers to detect.

"I don't know," she answered softly, her face thoughtful. "He is hiding something – something awful big."

She sensed the anger building in the man beside her, both physically and psychically. "Oh, honey." Missouri raised a hand to lie on the young man's shoulder, but hesitated at the last second. "Whatever it is, he's trying to protect you from it."

"I don't need protection!" he burst, but quickly reigned himself back in. He was a good boy, she knew, and he didn't mean to take it out on her. "I need answers. But he won't talk to me."

The Kansas-raised woman lowered her hand back into her lap, unsure how much she should say. In the end, she already knew she would tell him. She supposed she'd known for a while now.

"All I got was a flash. He's scared of something, and it's…nasty. Nothing like the spirit we saw back there," she glanced back at the house, Sam following her gaze.

"Do you have any idea what it is?"

She gave a thoughtful hum and looked back at Dean. He was watching them, but immediately turned back to Jenny as soon as their eyes met.

"There was a man, with…with black hair. And his eyes…"

Sam straightened beside her, gaze intense. "They were yellow?"

She shook her head. What she'd seen hadn't been the thing that killed their mom. It had been far, far worse.

"They were blue. The bluest eyes I ever seen."

-o-o-o-

Sam started a new document, still mislabeled so Dean wouldn't find it should he go looking. But despite the misnaming, its real title was 'Cass'.

He copied every scrap of information and lore he could find on the internet relating to any one or thing that could be shortened to the name his brother kept muttering in his sleep. Anything that had blue eyes. But eventually, he hit a wall and the black-hole-powered magic that was the internet could take him no further.

"Yeah, _Cass_. No, I don't know how to spell it. Best guess is C-A-S-S. Black hair, blue eyes. Yeah, okay, thanks Bobby." He shifted the phone to his other ear as he grabbed a second cup and slid it into the gas station coffee machine. Sam sent a quick glance over his shoulder, through the store windows to his brother drumming out a beat on the roof of the Impala as he gassed her up.

"I'm still here," he answered into the phone as he pulled his French Vanilla Caramel Café Delight away from the spout and capped it with a lid. He grabbed Dean's black sludge and headed for the front counter. "I know it's not a lot to go on. Just anything you can find."

There was a muffled answer of pure gruff down the line.

"Focus on demons, then," the younger Winchester said quietly just before he approached the bored teenager manning the register. The kid probably wouldn't notice a bomb going off in his own store, if the smell coming off him was any indication of just how high he was.

But Sam didn't want to admit his suspicions out loud, no matter the mental state of the audience. The niggling idea started on day one and hadn't left him alone since; that Dean was somehow consorting with a demon, or some other creature, to know what he knew.

Sam wasn't an idiot. The demon that killed their mom hadn't come back into their lives until he started having visions. Now Dean was having them as well and a mysterious name Sam had never heard before kept popping up. Either some demon was after his brother like Yellow Eyes was after him, or Dean had done something….something to get an edge up on Hell and whatever the Yellow Eyed Demon had planned.

He didn't want it to be true, but if it helped them find the thing…

"Start with Cassius Longinus. Yeah, the Roman general. There's enough lore out there about him turning in Hell after Caesar's assassination that it's worth checking." Sam gave a flat smile to the stoner who raised an eyebrow at the conversation even as he rang up his coffees and packaged donuts. "History paper."

"Uh-huh."

Sam's smile turned even flatter. He took his receipt and breakfast, and pushed his way out the doors of the gas station. "Thanks for doing this, Bobby."

He got called an idjit before the line cut out.

-o-o-o-

Missouri set her purse down on her front entrance table with a world weary sigh. That had been a long, hard day. Physically and mentally.

"That boy," she said with a shake of her head. "How he could sense all that, but not his own father, I have no idea."

John Winchester sat in her living room, running his hands over a tired, aging face. He was sitting right where his boys had been, less than a day ago now. Right where he had sat, at the start of it all, almost twenty-two years past. When he glanced at her, there was real pain in his eyes. So similar to that day. He worried at the wedding band still securely wrapped around his finger.

"Do you think Mary's spirit really saved the boys?"

He looked exhausted. She had not seen those dark circles beneath his eyes since the beginning. This was more than the world-weary state of a hunter. John's thoughts were far from her, something she had not before felt from the man or the hunter.

Missouri watched him from the doorway, concern sparking deep within her chest. There was something truly dark surrounding these poor boys. All three of 'em.

"John, you sleepin' alright?"

-o-o-o-

Dean laid his head down on the lumpy pillow and stared up at the popcorn ceiling of their latest fleabag 'home'. Sam was snoring in the bed next to him, and the older hunter longed to join him in passed out oblivion.

Only he couldn't. He couldn't get the image of Mary Winchester burning up and onto the ceiling out of his mind. Dean hadn't saved her. He hadn't changed anything.

How the hell was he supposed to save Sammy this time around, if he couldn't even save the ghost of their mother?

Aside from Jess, everything was still happening _the exact same_.

 _'Castiel_.' The prayer slipped out before he could stop himself. Reaching out to the angel that way had become natural over the years. Especially when he needed someone to talk to.

Dean had found himself doing it long after Cas stopped answering. After Van Nuys. At Lisa's. After the reservoir. And even longer still once the angel lost his ability to hear prayer anymore. It was something Dean just did. Sometimes to make himself feel better, sometimes to be less alone in the universe.

And he was so damn alone right now.

 _'Cas, please.'_ Dean closed his eyes and his palm found its way to his sternum, pressing down against the imagined warmth of an undamaged soul. At the whole-ness that meant no angel had saved him, no winged warrior of God had pulled his bleeding, broken spirit from the pit and stitched him back together.

No Castiel, no handprint, no profound bond.

 _'If you're there, man, I need to talk to you. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not-'_ Tears pricked at his eyes and he shut them all the tighter to keep them out. To keep it all out. ' _I'm not changing anything, Cas. I don't know how to do this.'_

There was nothing but silence. There hadn't been anything more than that for years.

 _'I need you to tell me what to do. I'm drowning here.'_

Eventually, he did slip into oblivion. Try as he might, he did not dream, of angels or otherwise. When he woke the next morning to the same silence he'd found himself in for months, Dean told himself that being disappointed at a lost cause was pathetic. That being angry because he'd let himself hope in the first place was a waste.

The warmth in his chest, the mountain lake he secretly loved and Dream-Cas showing up just when he needed him… They had never been anything more than a broken man imagining away his loneliness. Silence was all he would ever get when he was done dreaming.

 _Typical_.

-o-o-o-

Very, very far away, in a kingdom of light and color, one angel out of thousands paused in his heavenly duties, tilting his head to the side as he listened to a voice call for him once more in prayer.


	14. Season 1: Chapter 13

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Meg's topside once more, we've got a Fugly Pagan in an Orchard to deal with, and Sam's starting to put two and two together. _

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Chapter 13

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam woke groggily to the sound of ringing. It took him a moment to parse the sound as a cell phone. His brother's cell phone, specifically.

"Dean."

The ringing continued and the haphazardly sprawled lump in the bed next to him didn't move.

"Dean."

With a tired sigh, Sam slung his hand over the nightstand, fumbling around for the device. He didn't bother looking at the ID. There were only, like, ten people total who had Dean's number. And nine of them were Bobby.

"Hello?"

"Sam, is that you?"

The younger Winchester sat upright slowly, eyes open and wide awake. "Dad?" He took a deep breath. When was the last time he'd heard John's voice? But if he was calling… "Are you hurt?"

There was a light huff down the line and he could hear the smile in his dad's voice. "I'm fine."

Something in Sam's stomach twisted. John didn't sound fine, and the audible amusement didn't cancel out the exhaustion and worry in his father's voice. John Winchester didn't worry. John Winchester was a rock.

"We've been trying to get a hold of you." His brother was sitting up now, staring at him. "The thing that killed mom-"

"It's a demon, Sam."

That tripped him up for a moment, and he looked down at the bedding. So their dad had known more about Yellow Eyes than he'd told his boys. Sam was getting pretty sick of Dean being right all the time. "You knew?"

John was silent for a moment, and his son couldn't tell if it was born from guilt or anger. "For a little while."

"Did you know about Jess?"

Dean gestured for the phone, but Sam pulled away. He was having this conversation, whether his brother wanted him to or not. His dad let out a bone-tired sigh down the line.

"No. I swear to you, Sammy. I'd have done anything to spare you that." There was shifting and the sound of metal shaking in an enclosed space. His dad was calling from a phone booth. "I'm just glad you boys stopped it. That's gotta be a hell of a story; you'll have to tell it to me sometime."

"Why not now?" Sam frowned, fingers tightening on the phone. "Where are you?"

"I can't tell you that, son."

"Dad."

"Sam, give me the phone."

"I need you to take down these names, Sam."

"No, Dad, we can help you."

"Sammy, give me the damn phone."

The mobile was pulled from his ear forcefully and he bit his tongue hard, fists clenching as he turned to his brother. Dean was straightening in his seat, eyes darting back and forth as he listened to their father. Sam knew the second he heard John's voice that his brother would fall right back into soldier mode and that would be that. They'd never know where John was.

"Yes, sir."

Sam looked back up at his brother. There was something different in his voice. Something new, like everything else these days. Dean met his gaze, and there was anger there, but also something else. "But you sound like crap. What's going on, Dad?"

It irked him to not be able to hear the other side of the conversation.

"You don't sound fine." Dean rubbed at his forehead but nodded. "Yeah, I'm taking them down."

Sam moved to grab his brother the motel pad of paper and pen, but he just shook his head.

"Yeah, we got it, Dad. Alright. Take care of yourself."

Dean snapped the phone shut, and Sam opened his mouth to…he didn't know. Scream, shout, rant, argue, rebel, ask what the hell happened to the brother he used to know, and how the hell he could let this go just to take orders from a man who would barely talk to them. But whatever he was going to say, Dean beat him to it.

"Dad's in trouble."

-o-o-o-

"Alright, walk me through it again. Because I think I'm missing something." They were in the Impala once more, less than an hour after their dad had called, heading to Indiana of all places. While John was back in California. Sacramento, if Sam knew his area codes (which he did, and he'd double checked on the crappy motel wifi anyway).

Sam was still trying to wrap his head around whatever the hell was going on. Like the way his brother had told him, out of nowhere, that John needed help, but they couldn't go to him.

At least not both of them.

"You're going to go to some backwater town in the middle of _nowhere_ because Dad gave you the names of six missing persons who have _no_ connection to the place at all. And I'm going to hitchhike to California?"

Dean rolled his eyes as he urged the Impala to go faster. There was something close to panic eating at the edges of his gut. John had made that same call once before, and while he couldn't remember the details he knew he would have picked up on his dad sounding like death warmed over.

Which meant he hadn't sounded like he was about to drop last time around.

"The Stepford Couples ofBurkittsville, Indiana are sacrificing people – a boy and girl – to a pagan god once a year to keep their perfect little town perfect." Another time, he'd have had a million good jokes for that one. A thousand different perfect movie references. Maybe even a book or two. But right now, he was worried about John. "Dad figured out the pattern. The couples are going missing in the second week of April."

" _This_ is the second week of April," Sam muttered, catching Dean's drift and not liking it one bit.

"Bingo." The man from the future winced. There were times the déjà vu felt like vertigo it was so spot on. He hated the fact that he was still that predictable ten years later.

"Dean, dad isn't going to hang around Sacramento for a week!"

"I know. That's why you're going to California." Dean pulled the car off the interstate an hour outside Springfield, Illinois. The same bus station Sam had ended up at the first time, which Dean had spent a painstaking hour that morning trying to remember. Well…he was pretty sure it was the same one. Okay, so it ended up being a best guess thing more than actually remembering.

A turn and two streets later, they were parked outside the greyhound depot. "Two people are going to die if we don't do something, Sam. It'll take too long for another hunter to get here. I need a day, tops, to make it to Indiana and burn the tree. Then I'll catch up."

Sam was staring at him like he didn't recognize the man next to him. Which, okay, kind of fair. Dean was probably the last person that would ever suggest his family split ways. But he already knew Sam was going after John and that nothing was going to stop him except his brother being tied up and offered as a sacrifice to a fugly scarecrow god.

Better they just circumvent that entirely this time around.

Plus, unlike last time, John might really need help, even if he couldn't ask for it. If Sam didn't have to go back to save Dean, maybe they'd catch up to him this time. He really hadn't liked the way his dad sounded over the phone.

Something had changed, and they needed to know what.

"I thought you said you didn't have a vision." Sam was staring at him harshly, hand on the door but not quite ready to let this drop.

"I didn't. This was all dad."

"Right," his brother scoffed. "You just happen to know about a pagan god in Indiana, tied to a tree, because Dad gave you six names."

Dean shut his mouth. Shit, he hadn't meant to give that much away. Had he really given that much away? He probably should have kept the pagan bit to himself. And definitely the tree. Damn it, he really had said all that, hadn't he?

It was only further confirmation for Sam.

"You didn't get all this from a vision, did you?"

His older brother physically flinched and refused to look at him. Missouri had been right. Whatever had a hold of his brother had him _scared_.

"Did ' _Cass'_ tell you?"

That got a reaction out of the older Winchester. His head whipped around to stare at Sammy with wide eyes.

 _Son of a bitch_. _Should have known he wouldn't forget._

Sam took his shocked expression as confession. With a look surpassing anger and approaching terrifyingly blank, he spat out, "You talk in your sleep."

His brother paled and he turned his head away, eyes sliding closed. When he chanced a glance back, Sam didn't know what to make of the expression there. Pain, for sure, which fueled his anger.

If Dean was in this much trouble, Sam needed to know, damn it. Why was it his brother couldn't just trust him?

"Wh-" Dean cleared his throat. "What did I say?"

Sam's eyes narrowed as his anger hit a boiling point and his forehead smoothed out in a blank expression. Unbelievable. Caught red-handed, his brother still wasn't going to come clean. He knew how Dean worked – knew the game of letting the person fill in the blanks so you could agree with them, making them think that you were the one filling in the blanks. He was just about done being his brother's con.

"You tell me."

Dean searched his eyes before turning to the windshield. "Cas isn't… He's not a problem, Sam. He's not even on the board."

"But he will be, right?" The younger hunter leaned forward. "He's coming? Dean, what does he want with you? Is he like the Yellow Eyed Demon? Did he have something to do with Mom's death?"

Green eyes locked back on his, once more wide in confusion and surprise. "What? No! I told you, Sammy, he's not a part of this."

Sam laughed, but there was nothing remotely funny about this. The noise was angry and incredulous, and so damn fed up. He opened the passenger door. "I'm so sick of you lying to me, man. Do whatever you want; I'm going to go find Dad."

Sam climbed out of the Impala and Dean, cursing, followed suit. This was way too similar to how it had gone down last time and, damn it, he thought he'd been doing it better. He watched across the hood of the Impala as his brother stalked towards the Bus Depot

"Just keep your phone on you, alright? I'll catch up to you tomorrow."

Sam spun around, backpack slung over his shoulder and arms held out in frustrated resignation. "Right. After you hunt whatever _Cass_ tells you to hunt." The younger man shook his head, looking away as he bit at his tongue to keep from lashing out any further. He finally looked back at his brother with hurting, angry eyes. "I knew that gun was too good to be true. What the hell did you do, Dean? And what happens when you don't do what he says? Does he send demons after Jess? After Dad?"

He turned his back on his older brother and stormed into the building. Dean closed his eyes and slammed his fist down on the hood of the Impala.

-o-o-o-

He beat the steering wheel harder than Baby deserved as he pulled out his phone. Damn it, why couldn't things ever just _go right_.

"Dad?" Dean swallowed heavily past the lump in his throat. John hadn't answered – he hadn't expected him to – but just hearing the voicemail, hearing his voice that morning, was enough to hurt him somewhere deep where he was still a son whose mom had died tragically and whose dad was everything to him. "It's Dean. I'm- I'm heading to Indiana, but….damn it, I know you're not okay. Call me. Sam's on his way to you and we can help."

He snapped the phone shut and threw it to the other side of the car harder than it deserved, too.

-o-o-o-

Sam stared at the woman behind the glass with an expression bordering on rude. "Five pm. Seriously? There isn't any other bus that leaves earlier?"

"Unless you want to go to Miami, you can sit tight and wait just like everyone else."

His jaw clenched at the bitchiness, but he supposed that would be how this day would go. With an utterly unappreciative smile, Sam grabbed his bag and went off in search of a seat. He apparently had quite the wait in front of him.

The crappy Depot didn't even have wifi. Lucky for him, the bar next door did, and it reached where he was sitting with enough reliability to get some research done. There had to be some record somewhere of what color eyes Cassius Longinus had when he was alive.

-o-o-o-

He didn't stop in town or bother looking around. Dean drove straight through, the sight of the classic muscle car calling attention (and suspicion) from the townsfolk, but he didn't care. He'd be long gone before they even smelled the smoke.

The sooner he could meet up with Sam, the sooner he could tell him that Cas wasn't a demon. He didn't know what he was going to tell him after he got that part out, but he figured he'd start there.

Remembering exactly where the sacred tree was in the orchard was a long shot, but he figured the direction his gut liked best would have to do. He was pretty sure he'd recognize it when he saw it; they had the first time, after all. Grabbing the full gallon of gas they always kept on hand and checking his jacket pocket for his trusty lighter, Dean closed the trunk and stalked off into the trees.

-o-o-o-

It was three hours into his wait when she walked in.

She had short cropped hair and a cute punk look that, when coupled with the backpacking pack, completed the runaway persona. Sam wasn't really paying attention to who came and went in the Depot, and he wasn't the type to stare at a girl either (he left that to Dean), but she made such a ruckus at the front desk that when she plopped down beside him, it was kind of hard to ignore.

"What kind of crap town only has three busses the whole damn day?"

The young hunter glanced over at her only to confirm that she was, in fact, talking to him. She'd slung her bag in the seat next to her, sprawled across the plastic, and perched her leg atop the pack, swinging it back and forth distractedly. He was temporarily at a loss of words, if only because he was mentally waist-deep in the personal writings of a 1st century Greek Philosopher who participated in the assignation of Julius Caesar and was close friends with one, Cassius.

"Uh….the kind of town that's in nowhere, Illinois?"

She chuckle and started tapping her heel against her backpack as she surveyed the bus depot. He gave it a moment more to see if she planned to interrupt him further, before going back to his computer.

"So where are you headed?"

Sam resisted the urge to sigh. She was just being friendly. Or…forward. He wasn't sure which. But he gave her a harried smile and answered nonetheless, "California."

"Oh." She looked off again, and Sam went back to his philosopher. "That's nice. Beaches. Surfing."

He took a deep breath and decided he wasn't getting anywhere anyway. Closing his laptop, he gave his full attention to the woman in the leather jacket. "Yeah. I'm not really going for vacation."

"Yeah? Me neither."

Sam waited half a beat for her to continue. He honestly couldn't tell if she was just an idle talker with no focus, or if she was waiting for him to ask.

"Where are you going?"

The woman turned to him with a raised brow and he immediately got the impression he was on the wrong side of a joke. "I'm not telling you." She smirked slightly, looking up at him through long eyelashes and thick kohl liner. "You could be some sort of freak."

He pulled his head back with a scoff. "You asked me."

"Yeah," she answered with a shrug. "But I'm trustworthy."

The wink she sent his way was doing its best to turn irritation into amusement. "Ah, right," he pursed his lips in a tight smile, "you've definitely got that vibe about you."

She suddenly stood, all in one motion. "You hungry?"

"Uh…" Sam looked around at the empty depot with its solo half-empty vending machine. "For what? Potato chips and Life Savers?"

"I saw a bar on my way in." She picked up her backpack, heaving it up on her shoulders once more. "My bus doesn't leave till five, and I'd rather pass the time with a beer."

Sam glanced at the bus schedule behind the ticket counter. There really were only three busses that day, and only one leaving at five pm.

"You coming?"

She was smirking at him again, fully aware of what he was staring at. He shook his head, putting his laptop into his bag and following after her. "Yeah. Definitely the trustworthy type."

The woman just laughed as she pushed open the door.

-o-o-o-

The tree was burning steady within the hour. Fugly stayed stuck up on his perch, and when Dean passed by it on the way back to the car, there was nothing left but a smoldering cross and a pile of ash.

Dean made it all the way to the next town before he stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop.

-o-o-o-

"I'm Meg, by the way." They had a good sprawl of beers and nachos and chips and salsa. Not Sam's usual fair, but Meg spared no expense when she was craving bar food. And come on, everybody loved nachos.

"Sam." He took a sip of his beer, taking it a little easier than she was, on her forth already.

"Sam, huh? So, _Sam_ , what are you running away from?"

He gave her a look that was starting to feel pretty permanent on his face. It was something between irritation and amusement, which was usually reserved only for Dean or sometimes Jess when she was in a particularly playful mood.

The youngest Winchester didn't really enjoy being on the tail end of the joke. "Who says I'm running from anything?"

The blonde rolled her eyes at him, the grin ever present in her those big doe eyes. "Please. You have the lost groupie look down even better than me." She leaned in conspiratorially. "And I have a leather jacket."

He laughed around the neck of his beer, managing not to choke on a mouthful. "I'm not running. There's just something I have to find."

"And it's in California?"

Sam shrugged, looking down at the label on his drink. "It was. Who knows by the time I get there."

She was sympathetically quiet for a moment, possible lamenting her own grievances at the Illinois Greyhound company and its sad excuse of a bus schedule. "Is this a something, or a someone?"

He gave her a grim smile. "It's my dad."

Her eyes widened and she reached over to set her hand on his arm, only to think better of it at the last moment. He was grateful for the aborted move, but could appreciate the attempted sentiment. "Is he in trouble?"

Sam thought about the way John's voice had sounded on the phone. He'd sounded so damn tired. Dead on his feet. And Sam had only ever heard him like that when he came back from the really bad hunts.

"I think so, but he wouldn't tell me. So I'm going to go to find him."

He looked up from his beer to find her staring at him. Her eyes were so intense that he fought the urge to fidget under the contemplative stare. "California's kind of a big place. You know where he is?"

"I've got an area code. I'll start there." He cleared his throat and opted for a change of topic, unsure why she was making him uncomfortable. "How about you? What are you 'running' from?"

Meg heaved a sigh and launched into a tale of controlling parents with dreams for their child. Dreams their child didn't particularly want. Sam could relate – he'd been in the same exact place four years ago. Sitting in a bus stop with everything he owned in a bag, waiting for the ride that would take him away to college, away from a family that wanted everything he didn't.

She stared at him somewhat expectantly at the end of her story, but he wasn't sure what she wanted him to say. "I've been there. It used to be the same for me."

"Yeah?" Meg blinked those almond eyes at him. "But not anymore?"

He gave a soft smile, picking at the edge of the beer label. "Not for a while. I left my family for school, and, uh, didn't turn back."

She tilted her head. "Only you're running back to them now."

Sam set the empty bottle down on the table. "Yeah. Well….they're my family."

Meg kept watching him with intense eyes he didn't fully understand.

-o-o-o-

Dean called Sam once he was safely back on the interstate.

"Yeah, piece of cake. I'm on my way back now. Where are you?" He turned up the volume dial on the stereo and tapped his head to the classic music. "You're still at the depot? Jesus, Sammy, I figured you'd be halfway to the coast by now."

His brother bitched at him down the line and he grinned. "Yeah, yeah, sounds like excuses to me. I'll be there in a couple hours and you can ride in true style to California."

He could practically hear Sammy rolling his eyes. But then he was asking if he'd figured out what type of pagan the scarecrow had been and Dean's mind ground to a halt, mouth poised open, but lips frozen in an 'o' shape.

 _Son of a bitch, what was the thing called_?"

"Uh, yeah. Course. Something with a V. Varin. Verif. It was Norse, I couldn't pronounce it."

Sammy's less than enthusiastic answer left him feeling like he'd once again lied to his brother's face and been caught right in the act.

-o-o-o-

Sam lowered his phone with something between a growl and a sigh. Damn it, when was this going to stop? Because, to be honest, he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep traveling with his brother if the lies didn't stop.

"Everything okay?"

He sat back down across the floor from his new runaway friend. They were camped out in the bus station once more by the far wall of chairs, a card game stretched between them that he had stepped away from when his phone rang. They had two hours left to go, but at this point Dean would be back to pick him up before the bus left. And Dean would drive way faster anyway.

"Just my brother."

Meg raised her eyebrows at him over the top of her hand as she drew a card. "He hear anything from your dad?"

Sam shook his head, looking down at the phone in his hand before tucking it back into his bag and picking up his abandoned cards. Meg discarded the four of Diamonds and he picked it up to slide into his hand. "No. He called about something else. But he's on his way here."

The woman shifted, uncrossing one leg to tuck the other instead. Sam didn't pick up on the subtle change of body language, mind focused on his brother. "You don't sound too happy about that."

The hunter sighed, discarding a Queen of Spades and putting his hand back down. He didn't feel much like games right now. "Have you ever known someone who just, one day, became a totally different person?"

Meg straightened up a little, those full eyes regarding him with her complete attention. "What do you mean?"

"It's just…" Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I've known my brother my whole life. The guy practically raised me. And suddenly, one night he isn't…him anymore. It's still him – same stupid movie references and bad jokes and martyr complex. But…. I don't know. He's just….heavier. Keeping secrets."

She watched him for a moment after he trailed off, no longer sure how to put into words what was going through his head. She picked up the Queen of Spades and slid it into her hand. "Sounds like he got some bad news."

Sam blew out a puff of air and picked his cards back up. "Yeah, from who?"

-o-o-o-

They gave up cards after Meg mopped the floor with him four to one. She complimented his half-assed attempt, and he laughed off the sarcasm. Yeah, his head hadn't really been in it. Though the woman had a hell of a poker face.

Sam rubbed at his forehead, the beginnings of a headache banging against his skull. He was ready to be out of this bus depot, even if his escape was an equally cramped car with his cagey brother.

His phone rang at ten to five, and he glanced down at Dean's name across the screen. "Hey. Yeah, I'll be right out."

He stood from the hard plastic chair, scooping up his bag. His headache spiked with the sudden movement but he pushed through it. Meg was watching him with those intense eyes of hers and he chuckled when she didn't move from her sprawled position over the seat and her bag.

"You could come with me," he offered as he slung his duffle strap over his body. "Dean won't mind."

"I'm not getting in a car with your brother." She smirked up at him, once more through those long eyelashes. "He could be some kind of freak."

Sam laughed, shaking his head at her. "Good luck with your parents and your trip."

She smiled, and he realized the woman was never _not_ smirking. "You too. Hope you find your dad."

His smile was grim but appreciative. He turned for the depot entrance and stumbled as the pain in his head flared.

"Sam?"

Shaking his head, he tried to wave Meg off, but then he was on the floor, his head _pounding_ between his hands like a pick ax working on a nail. He gasped as his vision flickered between flashes of white and empty black.

He could still hear Meg calling his name, her arms wrapped around his shoulders. He could hear someone yelling for help. But through all of that, he wasn't in the bus station anymore.

It was dark all around him, but he could tell the space was huge by the way the silence echoed. A flash of white had him gasping, and his dad was standing in front of him, his back turned but paused mid step, as though about to look over his shoulder to his son. He seemed somehow far away. Unreachable.

"Dad?"

John's head moved to the side, but he wasn't looking at Sam. The youngest Winchester followed his father's gaze through the throbbing in his skull.

There, in the dark, so deep in the black haze that he could barely make it out, was a pair of eyes. Cold, piercing, so dark amber they seemed inflamed. Inhuman. Sam took a shaky step back as something moved forward in the inky darkness. Something heavy slid across the floor, tensing in preparation for the pounce, and those eyes never blinked, locked on John Winchester.

"Run, Sammy."

The young hunter turned back at the sound of his dad's voice. John Winchester was facing him, arms held out to the side. Sam caught tired – _exhausted_ – eyes pleading for him to get away. There was movement to his left and he tensed, prepared to push his dad out of the way, to do _something_ before the thing attacked.

He was back in the bus depot as suddenly as he had left it.

"Sam!" Meg was holding him upright, pretty much the only reason he wasn't face first on the filthy tile floor. "Get an ambulance!"

"No," he mumbled, struggling to find his muscles on this plane of existence once more as he tried to push himself off the floor. It wasn't graceful, but he managed. "I'm okay."

"Sam, you went catatonic," Meg argued, looking up at him as he managed to stand, only slightly listing to the side as his head began to clear. "You had some kind of fit."

"I'm alright," he repeated, rubbing at his forehead. "I get these, uh, fainting spells. But I'm okay."

Meg climbed to her feet as the small crowd that had gathered began to disperse as he insisted he was fine, that he didn't need medical assistance. His bus buddy looked less then sure, as if she might need to catch him at any moment should he swoon like a damsel again.

"I'm really okay," he hissed through the last spike of pain, but grabbed his bag once more. He needed to tell Dean what he saw. Dad _was_ in trouble. "I should get out to my brother."

"What you should get to is a hospital."

He shrugged off her concern. "It happens all the time. Really, I'm alright. You sure you don't want to come with us?"

Meg eyed him with worry and no subtle about of skepticism, and he glanced at the front doors. Dean was probably wondering what was taking him so long.

"Think I'll stick with the bus."

He shook his head again, still somehow amused at this woman, before realizing what a bad move that was as he swayed in the sudden lack of balance. She moved to steady him, but the hunter waved her off. "Alright, well, good luck."

He was halfway out the doors when he heard her answer from behind.

"See you around, Sam."

-o-o-o

Dean pushed the passenger door open for his brother as the kid jogged over to the Impala. He was rubbing his head.

"Dude, what took so long? You stop for pie?" Sam slid into the car with a wince and Dean stared expectantly. "No, seriously, you got pie? I'm starving."

"Shut up, Dean," his brother answered with equal parts exasperated affection and pained annoyance. "I had a vision."

Pie, and all food, was suddenly the furthest thing from Dean Winchester's mind.

-o-o-o-

Meg waited until the Impala pulled out of the bus depot before she went outside, watching the sleek muscle car disappear down the road, headed west. She flagged down the first car to pass by – a shady guy in a white van that had seen better days.

That would do.

The guy grinned nervously at her, failing to hide all manner of sin behind his smile. "Looking to go somewhere, pretty lady?"

"Just need a ride." She smiled at him, even as she pulled open the driver door. He looked confused for all of a second before he was on the ground, nursing an aching arm as he stared up at the crazy chick climbing into his van.

"Hey!" He struggled to sit back up, clutching at his shoulder where he'd landed harshly on the concrete. The woman paused with one leg on the cab step before she turned back to him. The driver shrank back on himself, the look in her eye telling him he'd made a terrible mistake.

"I have to make a call," she said as if it was some sort of explanation, jumping back down and slinging her pack off her back.

"I-I…uh…I have a cell phone."

She smiled sweetly at him, even as she pulled a silver chalice from her bag. "It's not that kind of call."

In a single, deadly swipe that he never saw coming, she slit his throat and held the goblet to collect his spilling blood.

The driver was dead before she finished.

"Thanks for the ride." Meg climbed into the van, balancing the goblet of liquid carefully, and headed down the road after the Winchesters.


	15. Season 1: Chapter 14

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** None that we haven't already seen before: swearing, brotherly angst, and a heck of a cliffhanger ;) _

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 14

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The car flew past fields and telephone posts as the sun began to set on Midwestern USA. Sam had a pad of paper in his lap and was sketching near fanatically with a pen they had likely stolen from a motel somewhere along the line. Dean was starting to get annoyed with his brother's lack of attention to his questions of fair incredulity.

"Tell it to me again, cuz you're not making any sense."

"It was a vision, Dean."

"Yeah, I got that part, Professor X. I mean the part where you know the thing that's after dad."

His younger brother rubbed at his forehead, annoyed. The headache was still eating away at the inside of his skull, despite the couple of aspirin he popped as soon as he got in the car. "I don't know what it is. I just….recognized its eyes."

Dean frowned over at him before refocusing on the road. "Like you've seen it before?"

"No." Sam shook his head and stared past aching eyeballs at the sketch in front of him. It wasn't great; he was no artist, but he was sure he'd seen that gaze before. "Not the monster, just the eyes."

"Uh-huh." Dean sounded so skeptical that Sam's indignation flared without his consent, and he found himself a hell of a lot angrier than his brother's usual cavalier attitude called for. But Dean caught the look sent his way and had the decency to at least look sheepish. He cleared his throat. "So what else did you see?"

Sam clenched his jaw, but answered all the same as he tucked the sketchbook against the door and rummaged through the bag at his feet for his laptop. "It was dark, and the space was big. Really big. Like a cave."

Dean had to bite his tongue. Hard. "So…Dad's in a cave. He went from Sacramento, California to the world's largest cave?"

Sam's bitchface bordered on the more dangerous end of the Official Bitchface Scale, and Dean told himself to bite harder next time.

"Okay. We'll start looking for caves."

Sam wasn't anything close to appeased, but he didn't argue it any further. Instead, he opened his laptop, determined to prove to his brother that he did recognize those eyes and his vision could lead them to Dad. He knew it could.

-o-o-o-

"Do you remember that zoo we went to in Arkansas?"

Dean glanced over with raised eyebrows, but it was a short-lived look overrun by the smile that spread across his face at the memory. Yeah, he remembered that trip. They'd blown all three weeks of food and hotel allowance John had left them, but it had been worth it. He'd never seen Sammy so excited about anything.

"Man, your face when you saw the giraffes." He laughed, chest tightening with warmth at the memory. "Makes sense, given you're a cousin of theirs."

"Shut up," Sam rolled his eyes, but it was good natured.

"So what about it?"

The younger Winchester stared at his computer screen displaying the Little Rock Zoo website as he scrolled through their collection of animals. "I know I've seen those eyes before, and I keep thinking back to that trip."

Dean gave a cursory glance at the computer, trying to keep the skepticism out of his gaze, and left his brother to it.

-o-o-o-

The older Winchester let more miles pass than he should have before he finally opened his mouth to talk to his brother. Except, he had no idea what to say, and every line that popped into his head made him instantly want to retract his tongue like a tortoise in a shell. He glanced at his brother. Sam was busy typing away, digging into whatever this new vision of his had shown them.

It was a perfect opportunity to let the whole Cas thing go.

Knee-deep in a new lead on Dad, Sammy wasn't likely to remember their last argument for some time, or bring it up again until after they'd found John. It was the perfect time to just drop it.

The older Winchester's knee bounced up and down in a beat of anxiety and he glanced at his brother again. He shouldn't let it go, he knew that. Hell, he'd had enough hands on experience letting shit slide that shouldn't be slid to know how often it came back to trample his ass in a landslide of _'told you so.'_

But he still had no clue what to tell his brother.

 _Cas isn't a demon._

But what was he? It wasn't like he could come out and tell Sam about angels. Right? The idea of letting Sam think Cas was a demon didn't sit right in his chest, though. Sure, the guy was barely an angel anymore, but he knew how Cas would feel letting the younger Winchester think he was evil.

Not that his Cas would ever know, but that still rang a little too close to home for all of them.

 _I didn't make a deal._

But what had he done? Time travel was definitely off the conversational table. That wasn't something you just tossed out there. Sammy already thought he was lying enough as is; he didn't need to add something truly unbelievable to the mix.

 _I'm still your brother._

Was he? He certainly wasn't the brother Sam knew.

The never-to-be Stanford lawyer was going to ask all the questions Dean didn't have answers to and press buttons he didn't know if he could tolerate being pushed.

They had other things to worry about. He could bring it up another time.

So Dean tightened his grip on the steering wheel, forced his leg to stop its nervous bouncing, and didn't say a word. Sam was too wrapped up in his search for amber eyes to notice.

-o-o-o-

"That's it." Sam stared at his screen in surprise, hands on the sides to tilt it back so he could stare into the soft red-brown irises looking back at him. "Those are the eyes I saw."

His brother glanced over as he flipped the laptop around. Dean immediately switched his gaze to his brother's face, disbelief painting his own.

"You're kidding, right?"

The look Sam sent him told him he wasn't, and he glanced back at the screen again.

"So…a rhinoceros is hunting dad?" Dean looked away from the image of an African White Rhino, specifically a close-up photo of its eye. He gave a half shrug, which was only seventy-five percent sarcastic. "Well, it's got a certain irony to it, I'll give you that."

"Dean, I'm serious." Sam furled his brow, angry at the brush off, and turned the computer back around. "It wasn't a rhino. It just had those eyes."

His brother, wisely, said nothing. Although he did let out a rather skeptical hum. Lucky for him, Sam was busy staring at the image of the rhinoceros, mind desperately trying to re-pierce the darkness of his vision for the beast that lay beyond.

"They were angrier and there….there wasn't a horn." He closed his eyes to better recall the images he'd seen, disjointed and confusing as they had been. His head spiked with pain and he grimaced, but pushed through. "Maybe…tusks?"

"Awesome," Dean said, sounding anything but. "A Rhino-Mammoth. And it's after dad."

Sam clenched his jaw against his brother's flippancy and went back to his search for creatures fitting that description, no matter what his ass of an older brother thought.

-o-o-o-

They arrived at the location of the payphone – outside a warehouse north of the city – late on the third morning after John had called. The brothers stood around the empty booth, Dean leaning against the side of the Impala as Sam investigated the interior.

"What now?"

The younger Winchester looked over at his shoulder, loss, disappointment, and worry warring on his face. "I don't know."

Dean frowned, uncrossing his arms as he pushed off the car. "What, did you think he was just gonna be hanging out in the phone booth?"

He hadn't meant it to sound cold or accusing. Honestly, he was just surprised that Always-Have-A-Backup-Backup-Plan-Sam didn't have a friggin' backup plan.

His brother still sent him a dirty, slightly hurt look. Sam didn't want to admit that he'd half expected they'd find their Dad's body there. Instead, he shrugged defensively as he stepped out of the booth and looked around the relatively empty Californian street. "We treat it like a case. Knock on doors, ask around. Someone had to see where he went."

Dean watched him for a moment, weighing their options and where his brother's head was at, before conceding with a nod. "Alright, we'll start with the gas station across the street."

Although it looked pretty deserted with not a ton of traffic driving through his part of town, Dean started that way and his brother fell in to step worriedly beside him. He spared him a glance, before hardening his own resolve, if only for the sake of his family. "We'll find him, Sammy."

Despite the olive branch, the younger Winchester answered back, "It's Sam."

-o-o-o-

They didn't find him. They ran down every lead they could, but it looked like John Winchester did nothing more in Sacramento than stop to make a phone call. And that was more than possible; it was likely, even. The man was a highly trained marine followed up by twenty-two years of hunting paranoia. He knew how to disappear, he knew how to not be found, and he knew how to stay that way for months.

They were as good as screwed.

-o-o-o-

The two stopped in a diner on the outskirts of Sacramento that evening, Dean practically dragging his little brother in by the arm for all his whining and bitching about not stopping until they found Dad. But Dean already knew they wouldn't find him, and not just because of future knowledge. He knew the man better than anyone, and if he didn't want to be found then there would be no finding him. At least, not without help.

"Look," he started, trying to punch down his own irritation at his increasingly snippy brother, "we need to regroup."

"Dad doesn't have time for us to 'regroup', Dean. He's being hunted!"

The older of the two pushed on, despite the fierce bitchface and fisting grip on the tabletop that his brother presented him with. "We're no good to him if we can't _find_ him, Sammy. And we're not finding him here! Let's head to Bobby's. Maybe he has some ideas, a tracking spell, something we can use."

Sam didn't look nearly assuaged enough, but he sat back in the booth and stopped arguing. Dean let out a ragged sigh, running a hand through his hair. Their waitress popped up shortly afterward, chipper smile oblivious to the tension between the two.

"I'm Christie, I'll be getting you two anything you need today." She sent a wink Sam's direction, and the sasquatch put at least some effort into smiling back. It wasn't like his missing, injured Dad or unyielding, uncooperative older brother was her fault. "Can I get you started with something to drink? Our lemonade is sublime if you're looking for something sweet."

Dean tuned the girl out, not interested in the potential jailbait like he may have once been. Instead, he placed a quick order somewhat coldly (getting a disparaging look from the bubbly waitress) and waited for her to leave before trying once more to reach his brother.

"We'll find him, Sam, alright? I'm not giving up. But you know the man as much as I do – if he's gone to ground, we aren't finding him. At least not with neighborhood canvasing and phony FBI badges."

Sam spared him a glance and offered a half shrug. Not acquiescence, more like pouting actually, but at least it had a lot less snippiness than the last couple of hours. The older of the two gave himself a minute of reprieve, staring out the window of the diner. He watched cars come and go in the parking lot with disinterest as he steeled himself for continuing the conversation with his irate brother. After a mini pep-talk, he told himself to man up and turned back to Sam.

"This thing, the monster with the Rhino eyes," Dean went for a change in topics as his newest peace offering, "maybe it doesn't have anything to do with Yellow-Eyes. Demons don't usually tangle with the other shit that goes bump in the night. So maybe it's a normal hunt gone bad."

Sam straightened a little, the strong set of his shoulders changing from anger and tension to possibility. "If that's it, then we should be looking at cases in the area."

"Nah, if Dad's on the run, we can't limit the search to just here. We should check further out."

His younger brother nodded, already pulling out his phone and typing away. "I'll look for news down the whole coast."

Christie stopped to drop off Sam's water with a friendly smile and Dean's coffee with a scowl.

Sam had just pulled up the local news for states west of California when he glanced up to say something to Dean and stopped. The doorbell above the diner chimed with the entrance of a new customer, and Sam froze as Meg Masters walked in.

"No way," he muttered, staring in surprise as the woman looked around the shop for a moment before spotting him. She waved with a grin and headed their way.

Dean, noticing his brother's stare, glanced over his shoulder and immediately stiffened. _Son of a bitch. When the hell did Meg 1.0 join the playing field?_ With a sharp swear, he spun back around and Sam saw his hand go for the gun tucked in his waistband.

"We need to get out of here, _now_ ," Dean hissed, casting a quick glance around even as he made for the edge of the booth.

"Now, now, no need to run off just yet, boys." Meg slid into Sam's booth before the younger of the two could climb out. Her body language was relaxed, like an old friend meeting up for a light lunch. But her eyes and her frozen smile dared the two to make a scene.

The cocking of a gun beneath the table didn't even phase her.

"Dean," she tsk'ed with a tilt of her head and pouty lips, "Is that any way to treat a lady?"

The hunter responded with more of a grimace than anything and held the gun steady. Sam glanced between the two, having pushed himself as far into the booth as possible and away from the woman he had met just yesterday and was suddenly very sure was not human. She spared him a quick glance, winking a very black eye at him.

He pushed further away from her and spared Dean a look. His brother minutely shook his head.

"So. Sam, Dean. We need to talk."

"I really don't think we do."

She clucked her tongue at the older Winchester and opened her mouth to say more when Christie came back by with a wide smile at the new guest. Sam tried to dissuade her, shaking his head, but she either didn't notice, or didn't get the message.

"Hello, there! Can I grab you something? The boys just placed their orders, but I can get a rush job into the kitchen if you'd like."

Meg smiled sickly sweet up at the woman. "That is just so…. _sweet_ of you. How about you join us instead, hm?"

Christie's eyes widened in confusion as her body stiffened and she found herself all but slamming into the booth next to Dean. Her throat seized up as she tried to speak, tried to move, and she glanced, frightened, at the other men at the table.

Dean sat stiff and rigid, jaw clenched. This was not good.

Meg continued their conversation like they were speaking about the weather wit not so much as an interruption. "We want to know where you're getting your information, Dean." Her head tilted to the side once more, a gesture that might have been cute in Meg Master's body, but certainly lost its appeal when matched with those dangerous eyes.

"The Enquirer," Dean snarked right back, face deadpan serious. " _Demons and their Bitches_ , right next to _Housing and Décor_."

She dropped the smile. Beside him, the waitress made a hiccupping noise and her hand twitched towards her neck. A wide-eyed Dean spared her a worried glance, but immediately refocused on Meg, not trusting that bitch for a second. Sam moved to help, but a wave of Meg's hand and he found himself pressed back against the wall of the booth. Dean's jaw twitched, but he didn't move otherwise.

"Very funny. Let's try again, shall we?"

Christie was crying now, her face turning red and her eyes beginning to bulge in panic.

"Stop!" Sam barked and Meg turned her head sharply to him. "Stop. We'll tell you, just let her go."

The demon loosened her grip on the poor waitress's neck and the girl gasped for breath, tears streaking down her face and a freak-out held at bay only by demonic influence. It was a damn good thing they had chosen a booth near the back out of habit. Not that it mattered, much more and Meg would draw the attention of another half dozen hostages.

"His name is Cass."

"Sam!"

Nothing in the older hunter's face changed to give away his sudden anxiety and tension as he barked his brother's name in warning. Ten years from now Sam could read Dean like a large print book mostly filled with pictures, under a friggin' magnifying glass. But twenty-two year old Sam had been out of the game for four years, and worse, didn't know what was coming.

He trusted his brother, he did. The kid was smart. But Dean gritted his teeth hoping that wasn't a bad call. Because Meg couldn't know about Cas. Hell couldn't know about Cas. Not yet.

Meg was watching the younger of the Winchesters with a sharp, icy smile. "You'll have to do better than that, Sammy."

Christie choked on her sobs as her throat tightened once more.

Sam raised his hands in placation even as he shook his head. "That's all we know, I swear. He's been talking to Dean: Giving him visions, telling him what to do." He chanced a glance at his brother, whose eyes never left Meg's but whose insides loosened at the falsity. He should have known better – Sam always had been a hell of an actor, even as a kid. "We don't know who – or what – he is."

Meg turned black eyes on Dean and beside him the waitress whimpered. "Is that true, Dean?"

Through gritted teeth, the hunter replied, "You calling my brother a liar?"

The demon rolled her eyes. "I am if he expects me to believe a couple of hunters just decided to listen to the little voice that popped up in their head one day."

Her gaze promised pain for the civilian suffering beside them and Dean clenched his jaw hard enough to make it creak. "He didn't give me much of a choice."

Meg snapped her head to the side, intense eyes regarding the older hunter. "Interesting. So you're just a pawn."

Dean's finger tightened on the trigger, but the demon scoffed and gave him a look that called his bluff. Feeling the need to remind him that lives were at stake, Meg watched Dean Winchester intensely as the little thing beside him hiccupped through another terrifying throat squeeze.

She could see the rage and the hatred in the hunter's eyes, and she wondered where his little helper was now.

"Why don't you ask your boss, the Yellow Eyed Demon?" Sam cut in and she turned back to face his irate expression. "He sent you, didn't he? Why don't you interrogate him about the thing using my brother."

Meg smiled sweetly at his ignorance, but declined to respond. Instead, she turned her head sharply to Dean and Christie let out a hiccup as the demon's power tightened around her throat once more.

"Where's John?"

"We don't know," Dean supplied immediately, perhaps a little too quickly for the demon's taste if the sound Christie made was anything to go by. "He wasn't here when we got here."

Meg gave him a look that clearly expressed her skepticism. Beside her, Sam stressed, "He _wasn't_."

The demon shifted slightly, crossing her arms on the tabletop almost methodically as she regarded the two boys. "Alright, then, here's how this is going down."

She reached over and Sam immediately drew back to press himself against the wall once more. Meg smiled lewdly up at him through those thick lashes as she slipped her hand into his front pocket. He made a grab for her wrist, but quickly found his arms pinned back to his sides. With a leer and a lot more wiggling than necessary, Meg withdrew his phone with a clicking of her tongue and Sam wanted to throw up.

Honestly, he was sort of surprised Dean hadn't shot her, useless as it would be or not. He was glad for his brother's restraint, which looked to be in ever dwindling supply if his purpling face and jumping neck veins were any indication.

Meg sent his phone careening across the counter and Dean slammed his free hand down atop it to keep the device from sliding into his lap.

"You're going to call dear Daddy, and make him tell you where he is."

Dean leaned forward and slid the phone back. Meg caught it, eyes narrowing.

"I don't think so," the older Winchester sneered with the sort of confidence born from being one of the best hunters on the planet.

All mirth, however humorless and cold it had been, disappeared from the demon's face. "Well. That just sucks for little Mary Sue here."

All sounds cut from the poor waitress, whose eyes went wide as he opened and closed her mouth uselessly. Nothing, not sound or air or panic, was getting in or out. She looked desperately at the other two as tears streamed down her reddening cheeks.

Dean, refusing to so much as look at the civilian which could very well blow his play sky-high, leaned forward and regarded the demon with equally dangerous seriousness. "See, you can kill every person in this diner, but at the end of the day you'll still be dead. And since killing demons is part of the job description, I'm going to call that a win."

He tapped the barrel of the gun against the bottom of the table, and Meg's eyes darted down, the first strands of uncertainty filtering through her eyes.

"You're not seriously stupid enough to walk in here knowing I've got the Colt, are you?"

Meg regarded him with slivered eyes. Christie was starting to go dangerously purple, surpassing panic, but those at the table were paying her little attention. The humans couldn't afford to, and the demon had already forgotten her existence other than a means to an end.

"You're bluffing," she finally concluded, though her gaze did not lighten with the assuredness that filled her voice. "You wouldn't bring it here, where you can't keep it safe."

Dean shrugged a shoulder. "Probably wouldn't have," he conceded, "if you hadn't been following us since the bus station."

Meg sneered, physically rolling her eyes as she leaned back in the seat. "Bullshit. You didn't spot me."

"White van, Nebraska license plates. Want the number?" Dean's gaze was ice cold, and Sam glanced at him, barely managing to hide his own surprise. His brother hadn't said a word. Then again, this frigid, hard-edged man across the booth from him was hardly his brother.

Meg paled, and her eyes darted to the tabletop once more. It was obvious she wanted more than anything to check under the table, but Dean made it pretty clear the first thing he'd do if she moved was shoot her.

The hunter made a sudden aborted movement forward, and the demon smoked out of Meg Master's faster than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.

Christie started screaming.

The older hunter swore as he pushed her out of the booth rather roughly. She stumbled, managing to catch herself on one of the counter booths a few feet away. But by then they had the attention of the entire diner. Christie was hysterical, as she had every right to be, and the civilians of Sacramento, good people that they were, came to her aid. One of the patrons was yelling, another had her phone out and was clearly calling the cops. The cook was rounding the corner with a meat-cleaver in hand.

"Grab her!" Dean hissed at his brother with a frantic head gesture at the ailing Meg Masters, even as he clawed his way out of the booth. Sam, who had been justifiably taking a moment to gather himself, pushed at the stunned, confused woman even as Dean pulled at her from the other side.

The human that was Meg Masters was almost boneless, having not had control of her own body for weeks. As soon as she was out of the booth, supported by his brother, Sam was following and all but scooped her up and into his arms.

Dean rounded his gun on the approaching chef and Sam blinked at the .45 caliber, ivory inlaid weapon that was definitely _not_ the Colt.

Son of a bitch, and that wasn't even his line.

The two booked it out of the diner, Dean holding anyone who tried to stop them at gunpoint, as they essentially kidnapped the stunned Meg Masters and hauled ass out of Sacramento.

-o-o-o-

When Sam asked him why he hadn't actually brought the Colt in if he knew they were being followed (and the sarcastic, ' _Thanks for the heads up on that by the way'_ had paired well with one of the more pissy bitchfaces), the older Winchester had to admit his bluff. He'd seen the van pull into the parking lot a few minutes before Meg had shown up. Sure, he'd immediately recognized the state plates from force of habit and years on the road, but she had parked out of view from the window bordering their booth.

And it wasn't like he'd actually be paying it enough attention to memorize the license plate. If Meg had called his bluff, things would have ended very, very differently for them.

Luckily, time and time again proved that demons were self-preservationists first and evil second.

-o-o-o-

Dean kept glancing at the back seat, where a quiet post-possession Meg was still processing what was going on. They were on their way to the hospital, only a couple blocks away, to drop the girl off.

He couldn't believe she was alive. They'd saved her this time around. He would never have to look into the angry, aching eyes of her ghost as she blamed him for her death.

Sam was carefully drawing the anti-possession tattoo they would leave her with, because Meg was absolutely the type of demonic bitch to re-possess the same human, just for cruelty's sake.

They dropped her off at the emergency entrance with a yell for help, and apology for leaving, and a drawing clenched tightly in her shaking hand.

-o-o-o-

"We need to go back," the younger Winchester announced before they'd even made it out of the county. Dean was a tense mess, checking the review mirror for more than just cops. "The girl could know something."

"Sammy, come on. She's traumatized. She's going to be lucky to remember her own name after something like that." Dean rapped on the steering wheel as he guided the Impala to the highway. Back roads would be safer, but they didn't have time. They honestly needed to get out of the state before the people in that diner could get the cops looking for them.

He was going to have to change the plates on the Impala, just to be safe.

"She could have information on the Yellow-Eyed-Demon!" Sam argued. "Meg was in her head, man. She has to know something."

Dean finally spared an incredulous look at his brother, who was usually the sympathetic, not to mention smarter, of the two. "Sam. Everyone in that diner thinks we just _kidnapped_ a woman at gunpoint! We're gonna be lucky to get out of the state without being arrested!"

Sam grit his teeth hard enough that Dean could hear the creaking. His brother knew he wasn't wrong, but he could see it in Sam's eyes: the desperation for information.

He'd seen it before, after all.

"Look, I swear to you. We will figure this out. But right now, we need to get the hell out of here while we still can."

Sam settled in his seat, seeing reason but completely unhappy about it.

-o-o-o-

They made the news that evening, even as far away as the boarder of Wyoming, where they stopped for the night. The police had rough sketches of them, though luckily no cameras had been present in the diner.

The news caster seemed a bit baffled by the story, which was contradicted by eye witness accounts. The majority of those present in the diner called it a kidnapping, but the waitress was labeled as an unreliable witness due to trauma, and the woman they had, in fact, kidnapped showed up at the hospital less than an hour later claiming they had actually saved her.

All in all, the police didn't know what to make of it. But official reports on the two were filed, though largely left blank, and tossed into a pile the Sacramento PD jokingly called 'The Weird Ones'.

It would be six months before those files, significantly thicker by then, would land on the desk of an FBI agent.

-o-o-o-

Sam waited until he was sure his older brother was asleep before quietly slipping from his bed and into the motel bathroom. They were still half a day's drive from Sioux Falls, but convincing Dean to call it for the night had been relatively easy. Despite taking a fair share of the driving recently, Sam knew his brother didn't like relinquishing the wheel, and he was pretty exhausted after the last few days.

Reassured by the soft snores coming from Dean's bed, Sam shut the door with a soft click. He turned around to the sink and old mirror, yellowing along its edges. Gripping the sides of the porcelain surface, he stared into his own reflection, looking for whatever it was that lay beneath the surface.

He knew he could find John. He could almost taste the vision, the edges of it that had been shrouded in darkness, hidden from him. He knew they were there, that the answers were just beyond what he could reach. If only he could push it a little further. If only he could see clearly, like Dean could.

Sam felt the first drops of blood drip from his nose, but he didn't stop. His gaze was lost to the darkness, to those cold amber eyes and John's desperate plea for him to run.

He heard the distant plop of liquid falling in the sink. Distantly, he knew when the drip become a flow. Felt his fingers dig into the sink until his nails screamed. Felt his head pound higher and higher, faster and deeper with every heaved breath he took in the dream. Every inch of light he gained on the beast that was chasing his father. He felt the burning in his legs and lungs as both gave out.

But he never felt the floor hit.

-o-o-o-

Dean woke to a thud. He was upright and stumbling out of the bed before he registered what woke him. But when he did, his first glance was to Sam's empty mattress.

"Sam?"

Silence was the only answer, and he spun in the hotel room, now wide awake. The bathroom door was closed, and a sliver of yellow light gave him some immediate relief. The fact that the sliver only reached half the width of the door, blocked by something on the other side, lessened that relief significantly.

"Sam?" He gave a quick rap on the wood and then tried to push it open. Locked.

Really, Sammy?

He gave the door a bodily shove with his shoulder. The cheap lock gave almost immediately, but the wood bounced back heavily, blocked by something on the other side. Something he was growing increasingly worried was his younger brother.

"Sam!" He pushed on the door forcefully, grunting with the effort of moving his brother's dead weight as he got the door cracked open just enough to slip into the bathroom. "Shit, Sam!"

The younger hunter was lying unconscious on the tile, blood freely flowing from his nose and eyelids fluttering nonstop in a near seizure of movement beneath. Landing hastily on his knees, Dean scooped his brother's torso into his lap, cradling his head as he tapped at his cheek.

"Sam!" He shook his brother, mindful of the injuries he couldn't find. "God damn it!"

The younger Winchester jerked with a groan, eyes finally opening and stilling their near crazed flickering. The blood was still flowing as Dean pulled Sammy's shirt up and pressed it to his nose in an attempt to staunch the flow.

"D'n?" Sam sounded exhausted, barely awake. His hand flopped uselessly, trying to remove the thing over his face. Dean pushed the appendage away, keeping the cotton pressed firmly to his brother's nose. Damn, the blood wasn't slowing.

"What the hell did you do?"

Sam blinked hazily, hand once again making a half-assed, aborted move. "T-tried to make 'em str'ng'r. Like yurs."

Dean blinked harshly down at his brother, who was deteriorating fast. Shit, whatever was happening, it wasn't getting better. "What?"

"V'zns," Sam muttered, eyes rolling back in his head as he went limp in his brother's arms.


	16. Season 1: Chapter 15

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _- **A/Ns** : Okay, two amazing things happened in the last week. First, I have a brother-in-law now! My sister's wedding was a whirlwind, but a spectacularly beautiful one. Second, we **PASSED 100 REVIEWS**! Thank you to every one of you readers, but especially those of you who have taken a moment to leave a comment. Your suggestions, enthusiasm, and requests help spur my mind and power the ideas that make up this story. In short, you keep me going as I tackle this beast of a five year story. Thank you, thank you, thank you!_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Prepare for some Brotherly Angst as only the Winchesters can provide! Sammy's not out of the game yet, but we're going to see just how many options we can cross off the list before we, of course, save our favorite Moose._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 15

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean's leg kept a constant beat against the sterile, vinyl flooring of the hospital waiting room. It may have started as a Metallica song, but had deteriorated into nothing more than anxious tapping occasionally dipping back into something almost recognizable as _Enter Sandman_.

It had been three hours and fifty six minutes since they'd taken Sam away, after a frantic drive from the motel into the town of Evanston and the nearest emergency room.

Dean was losing his mind.

Something was wrong with Sammy, something that hadn't happened originally. Which meant Dean had no guarantee he was going to be okay. Because he had no idea what had happened, what had changed to cause it. And that was on him. Whatever changes were happening and the consequences of those differences, they were all on him.

The crutch of knowing what came next, which fights they survived and others to avoid, was crippling now that it was gone. Dean had come to rely too heavily on knowing when they were good and when to panic.

But Sammy had to be fine. He had to. Heaven and Hell weren't going to lose this race before it even got started. It was hardly comforting, but Dean tried to find confidence in the bigger picture, something the Winchesters were famously crappy at.

The only thing he had to go on, as a doctor had yet to come and inform him of his brother's condition, was that Sam had been having a vision. It must have been one he hadn't had the last time around, which meant it was probably about dad again.

Though the image of his brother on the floor, blood running down his nose, was only drawing parallels to a much darker, hungrier Sam. A Sam that killed demons with his mind and took on Famine with blood smeared across his face like a feral grin. A Sam that Dean would absolutely not let into existence this time.

So far, his efforts were going swimmingly.

The double doors to the waiting room swung open and a harried nurse and far too grim doctor emerged. Dean was on his feet before they'd even called the fake name listed on his brother's insurance. The look on the doctor's face was not encouraging.

"We've stopped the bleeding, and your brother is stable for now."

Dean let out a breath he'd been holding since the motel bathroom and his brother's growing puddle of blood.

"There are still tests we need to run but…I'm afraid it's not good, son."

"What do you mean 'not good'?" the older Winchester asked tightly, clenching his fists at his side to keep himself from throwing a punch at the guy who was only doing his job. "What does that even mean?"

The doctor's eyes crinkled in sympathy and Dean really did want to hit him. It was the look that every person used when the outcome was inevitably death. Dean shook his head, he wouldn't accept that. He wouldn't.

"There was bleeding in his brain, and the damage is… extensive."

Cold flooded his body. Not Sammy. Not his genius kid brother who constantly amazed him with his utter nerdiness and brilliance. Not his brother. Brain damage wasn't an option.

"Right now there's a lot of swelling and pressure, and we can't find the cause. You don't usually see this kind of strain in someone so young."

The nurse put her hand on Dean's arm, and he realized he was shaking.

"There are still tests to run, as I said." The doctor sighed, and Dean knew what was coming, even if he denied it with every fiber of his being. Even if Time and Fate themselves were telling him it shouldn't be happening. Wouldn't happen. Hadn't happened. Ergo, _not happening_. "But damage that severe….I'm sorry, Mr. Burkovitz. It's not repairable."

"What?"

"Your brother has a couple of weeks. Maybe a month at best."

"No." Dean blinked away the water filling his eyes. He stumbled a step back, body numb even as he shook his head again. "No."

The doc was speaking but he wasn't listening. His brain held rational thought for all of about thirty seconds before Dean was slamming the doctor into the wall. The nurse screamed for security even as the hunter shook the man by the lapels of his coat.

"This isn't how it's supposed to happen! Do you hear me? You fix him!" The doctor, shocked, grabbed at his wrists, but the man from the future was running on adrenaline and borrowed time, and nothing was going to stop him from saving his brother. Not this time around. "You have to fix him! This is not where my brother dies!"

Security arrived and pulled him away from the doctor. Dean hit the floor on his knees, struggling to breath as all the oxygen and fight left his body and the last six months caught up to him.

-o-o-o-

The hospital staff was exceptionally reasonable about his outburst. Apparently, he wasn't the first. According to the nurse, he'd hardly be the last.

He apologized to the doc in Dean Winchester style, which was not really apologizing at all. But the man nodded and started going over Sam's options once it was clear the hunter had regained his calm and was unlikely to attack him again.

They eventually left him in his brother's hospital room, alone with an unconscious Sam and the steady beat of a weak heartbeat. Dean sunk, lost, into the chair by his brother's bedside. The kid was hooked up to all sorts of wires and tubes, something Dean had seen more times than he'd ever be comfortable with.

But this time the kid was positively ashen, with dark circles under his eyes and a looseness to his skin that left him looking dead already.

Dean wanted to hit something again or cry. And since the first would only end up with him permanently kicked out and the second wasn't an option at all, he sat numbly in the chair and watched his kid brother sleep.

-o-o-o-

They kicked him out again in relatively short order to let Sam get some rest. Dean spent the last of the early hours of morning packing up their hotel room and finding accommodation closer to the hospital in town. Visiting hours didn't begin until eight, so he spent the last two hours brainstorming and researching every possible way out of death the two had ever used or heard of.

A deal was out of the question, as all it would achieve was starting the apocalypse a resounding two years early. Which was pretty much the dictionary-definition antonym of what Dean had come back from the future to do.

Heaven was out too. Any angel but Castiel would probably walk Dean straight to the nearest crossroads and hand deliver him into a deal. Any angel sympathetic to his cause would likely fall in line as soon as a superior demanded it. And fuck all if Zachariah or any of the archangels would get them out of this.

Dean had given Gabriel more than a moment's thought when his mind stumbled over Michael, as briefly as he had. But it had taken them almost a year to talk the celestial runaway onto their side, and even then it hadn't been about saving humanity but his pagan friends. Dean had no leverage to offer and nothing to convince Gabriel that it wasn't time for the apocalypse yet.

So he let Loki go from his mind and focused on their other options.

Dean had already prayed his mental voice hoarse calling out to Castiel. If the angel had made it back from the future with him (and after the last lake-side chat he honestly didn't know anymore) then he wasn't answering.

The hunter tried not to blame him viciously for it in his panic-stricken grief. If Cas was there and not answering, then the reason was he simply couldn't. Despite their tumultuous past, Dean knew that the angel come for Sam if he could.

Which left Present-Day Cas. Dean had tried praying to that angel too, unsure of himself on what to even say as that version of his best friend wouldn't know who he was.

If that angel got the stumbling, desperate prayer, he wasn't answering either.

Dean didn't bother holding back his anger at that version of Cas, cursing him out in his head. So called angels, protectors of 'God's greatest creation' his ass. Couldn't even spare a moment to heal the fucking savior of the planet.

Of course, this timeline-Castiel may not be open to the idea of the Boy With the Demon Blood being a savior, or worth saving for that matter.

Bag of dicks, the lot of them.

So he moved on. Heaven was out. Hell wasn't an option, at least not yet. ( _Never,_ he told himself. But he knew it was a lie even before he thought it.) Death was sealed up tight and would be forever more as long as Lucifer didn't pop the box. That left the pagans and witchcraft.

God, he hated witches. They were just…so skeevy.

There were a couple of them he could think of that might have enough juice for the job and had the extra benefit of not making his skin completely crawl. Rowena had the ability, for sure, but there was no way he was adding her to this clusterfuck. She'd probably find a way to release Lucifer all on her own, while body-switching the brothers and locking Heaven's doors up in one stupid ass spell that they would have to blackmail Crowley into conniving, killing, and kidnapping until it was reversed.

There was a long list of people he never wanted to see again in this timeline, and Rowena ranked pretty far up on that list. Plus, he had no idea where she was in 2006, and it wasn't like his brother had the time for a witch hunt.

So he wrote down the few other witches he thought might be up for the job, along with a couple medicine men they'd run into in the past.

The pagans would be harder to work with, but more likely successful in the end goal. Especially if he could find one of the ones that would protest the apocalypse in years to come. If he could convince them that saving Sam would help stave off the End, he was more likely to gain their help (and be able to afford whatever payment they demanded in return).

He jotted down the couple he could recall from that hotel horror scene with Lucifer, and a few more off the top of his head that weren't completely against humans in general. Or had any sort of appetite for them.

Armed with a small list and a dozen calls to make, he headed to the hospital.

-o-o-o-

Sam was pretty weak. He nodded along with all of Dean's plans, but the hunter could see he wasn't holding out much hope, and it irked him to his soul.

Unfortunately, calling him out on it only triggered a fight about Dean needing to let Sam go, which was absolutely not happening. In turn, Sam's stats sky-rocketed as the fight got vocal and the nurses had to shove Dean out the room to calm his ailing brother back down before he gave himself an aneurysm and kicked the bucket an extra couple of weeks early.

-o-o-o-

They had Sammy doped up pretty heavily the next time they allowed Dean in his room with the very stern warning that if he started anything again he would be banned from the hospital completely. The hunter, while agitated and guilt-ridden, was sincere in his promise to be good.

Sitting in the chair in the corner of the room, Dean stared at his phone and the speed dial he'd almost called a dozen times while reaching out to other contacts. Finally, he hit the number and pressed the phone to his ear.

Unsurprisingly, it was voicemail that picked up.

"Dad." Dean's voice broke and he bowed his head as tears threatened once more. He rubbed at his forehead, forcing words passed the sharp tightness in his throat. "Dad, pick up. I could- I could really use your help right now."

He was barely holding it together as he left a message for his not-dead Dad, who was being hunted by who knows what, to tell him that his baby brother and the sole purpose John Winchester had ever instilled in his oldest son, was lying near death in a hospital bed. And all of it was his fault.

Why did he ever think he could change the future for the better? Dean Winchester only ever made things worse. Dean Winchester broke the world, over and over again, and never did better than duct tape and Band-Aids when it came time for cleanup.

If he couldn't fix his brother…. He already knew he'd break it all over again at the first crossroads he came to.

"Dad, please. It's Sammy, he's….It's bad." Green eyes slid closed as tears hit the tiles below as silence reigned down the line. God damn it. He hung his head, suddenly drowning in the despair that had been building for months now. "Why did I even bother?"

He slid the phone down from his cheek and flipped it shut.

-o-o-o-

The next time Sam woke, his older brother was asleep in the chair in the corner, tucked out of the way so nurses could come and go as they needed. Dean's eyes, though closed, were ringed red and puffy and his brother's obvious pain and distress stabbed at the young hunter's heart. He continued to watch him groggily for a while, working the haze of the drugs out of his system.

He was going to die, and soon.

The doctors had talked to him the first time he woke, before they let Dean into the room. They'd tossed some ideas around and offered a few meager platitudes of hope, but Sam could see in it in their eyes and hear it in their tones.

There was nothing to be done.

Sam stared up at the ceiling tiles, blankly contemplating what would be the last few weeks of his life. His head ached, like he'd gone a round with a baseball bat after a sinus infection. All stuffed attic interiors and hot air balloons amid a buzzing drumbeat and the pulse of muscle cramps in his shoulders and neck.

He'd pushed too far.

And for what? What had he gotten for his efforts? For his life, as it turned out? He still didn't know where their dad was. He just couldn't see it like Dean did.

Sam turned his head to the side, neck muscles straining against the ache of illness and death. His phone was lying among his other personal effects on the table beside his hospital bed.

Perhaps it hadn't been completely worthless.

It took a couple of tries to get his boneless, exhausted limbs to cooperate and his fingers to grip the smooth plastic, but eventually he got a good hold on his phone and brought it to his chest.

The simple move alone had been exhausting and he lay there panting.

He took a moment to breathe deep breaths and relax the tense, cramping muscles in his shoulders and the base of his neck. When he was ready, he powered on his phone and pulled up the web application.

Sam could make the last of his life mean something. He could make that much of a difference: give his brother and dad a fighting chance against the looming horizon. Because he had seen something in his vision, something he'd seen the first time but couldn't parse through the confusion and haze.

A beast hidden in the darkness, with the body of a lion, the head of an elephant, and the eyes of a rhinoceros.

-o-o-o-

"It's a Baku."

Dean was still shaking the sleep from his eyes when he looked up and realized Sam was awake. More than awake, he was holding his phone out towards his older brother, an internet article pulled up.

The hunter surged up from his chair, rubbing the grit from his eyes as he crossed the hospital room to take the phone. "What?"

"The thing hunting dad. It's a Baku." Sam sounded exhausted, but even as he blinked tired eyes, they were lit with determination and the last of the life he had to give.

That gaze broke Dean somewhere deep inside.

He read quickly through the words on his brother's cell. A creature of Japanese origin that ate nightmares and could be summoned to devour bad dreams. Supposedly, it was made of leftover animal parts after the gods had finished with all other creatures.

Awesome.

"Some of them get greedy," Sam whispered hoarsely, gesturing weakly at the article with his hand. "They go after more than nightmares. They start in on hopes and dreams."

Dean glanced up from the phone with a raised brow, a question he didn't need to voice.

"I saw it. Lion's body, tusks, trunk. It makes sense, Dean. It's why dad sounded so tired." Sam struggled to sit up and his brother immediately went to assist him. Once he was upright and leaning back against an abundance of pillows, Dean handed his phone back. "He knows it's hunting him in his sleep."

Dean nodded, scratching at his short hair as his mind spun. "Alright. Alright, we'll call him, leave him a message."

"No." Sam gave him a look he couldn't meet head on. "He needs help. You need to find him."

"As soon as we get you fixed."

"I'm not getting fixed, Dean!"

A passing nurse stopped in the hallway to give the brothers a warning look. Sam's stats were still in the green, but could easily jump into yellow if they didn't keep it down. Dean gestured placating to his brother and the kid sunk back into the pillows.

"Even if I knew where Dad was, there is no way in hell I'd leave you here, Sammy."

"It's Sam, and I'm not your kid brother anymore!"

The sharpness in those words, the anger and bitterness in his tone cut the older of the two brothers to his core.

"Is that what this is about?" He stared down at Sam in no shortage of shock and hurt. How was it he could travel through time to a life he'd already lived, and yet still be surprised by his little brother? "Is that why you pushed until you damn near killed yourself? Because I call you Sammy and act like your big brother? Newsflash, I _am_ your big brother!"

He grabbed the edge railing of his brother's bed, holding Sam's gaze with the fierce promise of his own. "God damn it, Sam, you will always be my kid brother. Ten years from now or forty, if we somehow live that long, you will still be my snot-nosed little brother."

Vaguely, he was aware this was likely on the list of things he'd never admit to saying on pain of death, but he didn't have the time to care. Once the dam was broken, it was near impossible to seal back up. The part of him that wasn't a repressed child in a man's body knew – had really known for a so time now – that his brother needed to hear it. Deserved to hear it. And Dean needed to hear it too. Had needed to say if for a good ten years now.

"It doesn't mean you're weak, or that I think you can't take care of yourself. You're one of the strongest men I know, Sammy. _Sam_." He gave a small concessionary nod at the correction, which he swore he'd start working on if the kid really wanted him to. "You've got nothing – _nothing_ – to prove to me."

His brother watched him with watery eyes even as Dean pulled back. Finally, Sam nodded with a solemnity that told Dean he still expected and accepted his impending death, but that the two would greet that end on better terms than they'd been on for months.

It pissed him off, but he'd take every little victory he could.

-o-o-o-

As soon as the hospital room door closed behind him, Dean tugged at his hair before running his hands punishingly across his scalp. Tears bit at his eyes and anger ate at his heart, but he refused to give in.

He collapsed in the cheap plastic seats that lined the hallway and let out a broken exhale.

His contacts had gotten back to him over the last couple hours and prospects weren't looking good. Some of the witches couldn't be located – one had been taken out by a hunter last year, another by a bad deal just a few months ago. The medicine men were notoriously hard to get a hold of, and a few of his hunter buddies were still on it, but they'd made it pretty clear not to expect anything soon.

And Sammy needed soon. He didn't have time for anything else.

Which left the pagans. Dean had kind of hoped to avoid them if possible, if only because they were unpredictable in their willingness to help, and a hell of a lot harder to pin down.

He looked down at his cell phone, held tightly enough that he was pretty lucky he hadn't broken it yet.

Damn it, he needed to talk to someone about this. Anyone. He couldn't keep doing this alone, couldn't keep it up. Especially not if Sammy…

"Excuse me." Dean looked up to see a nurse standing in front of him, looking uncomfortable as she held a brightly colored paper between her hands. The woman fidgeted and hesitated, glanced down at the flier and then back to Dean. She reached up to fiddle with the delicate gold cross hanging from her neck on a small chain. "I…I don't usually do this but…"

The nurse looked over her shoulder towards Sammy's room and Dean straightened, voice and eyes hardening. "Do what?"

She blushed. "It's….It's just that you seem really down on your luck and it's so hard to see loved ones…" She thrust the paper out at him. "He's the real thing, I've seen him work. I-I know it probably sounds crazy, and I don't usually-"

The nurse abruptly cut herself off with flushed cheeks. She gave up her stumbling explanation as Dean took the paper. The flustered woman made a hurried exit down the hall and when the hunter glanced down at the blocky text, he understood why.

It was a flier for a faith healer, one Reverend Roy LeGrange.

 _You've got to be fucking kidding me._


	17. Season 1: Chapter 16

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _- **A/Ns** : I decided to post on a one week schedule for once: we earned it! The feedback and reviews sent my way last chapter were awesome and really helped me keep on schedule, and even surpass my usual chapter quota during a crazy-busy week at work and life. You all rock, and so here is a chapter just for you beautiful people!_

 _ **Reviews** : it was really cool to see the mix of "huh, I did not see that coming" with "OMG I SAW THAT COMING!" for the last chapter. I loved hearing both of those things and am glad the story is providing a mix for everyone. _

_I really wanna know if anyone saw what's coming next ;)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Dean faces quite the moral dilemma, Sam doesn't see how this is up for debate, and the reaper isn't the only thing to worry about at the Reverend's church._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 16

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They were getting Sam into a wheelchair when Dean came back into the room, having left to pull the Impala up outside the hospital. It had taken extensive negotiating with the doctors to release his brother into his care. It wasn't like keeping him in the hospital was saving him anything; they were just postponing the inevitable, as the doctors kept reminding him. Dean was pretty sure all that had won him that argument in the end was the doc remembering Dean's temper and ultimately, though unhappily, acquiescing to save face. Literally.

So there they were, helping Sam into a wheelchair to get him out of the hospital and onto the road. Getting the sasquatch into the Impala would be a challenge of itself, but the brother's would manage. They always did.

Now all that was left was for Dean to figure out what the hell he was going to do.

 _Could_ he trade innocent life for his brother's?

Yes. Yes he could. And yeah, he was friggin' torn up about it and he knew Sam would never forgive him. But when it came down to it, time and time again had proved there was little in this life Dean wouldn't do to keep Sam safe.

Was he _going_ to trade an innocent life for his brother's?

Dean had no friggin clue. Either way, someone had to take care of the pastor's wife and break her hold on the reaper. So they might as well start there, and he could figure the rest of it out on the way.

"Where are we going?" Sam asked with genuine curiosity once he'd recovered his breath and his head had stopped pounding. Well, it never stopped, but it did lessen to the point where he could actually hear his brother's response over the drumming.

The nurse behind his wheelchair gave Dean a nasty look at the obvious exhaustion and pain her patient was in. The hunter didn't care. Yeah, his brother looked like shit and it was obvious he should be in a hospital bed, not checking out AMA, but it didn't matter. A reaper in Nebraska had a hell of a better chance of fixing Sammy than staying there did.

Ignoring the woman and focusing back on his brother's question, Dean contemplated what to say. He couldn't tell Sammy the plan – not yet. One: because he didn't actually _have_ a plan. And B: the kid would never get in the car if he knew Dean was considering trading someone else's life for his.

What had Sam lied his ass off calling it?

"We're going to a specialist."

-o-o-o-

They were outside the motel Dean had spent the night in - a crap-ass, rundown place that was within manageable distance to the hospital in case of emergency but far enough away for a reduced police presence. They had just kidnapped a girl three states over, after all. Dean was throwing the last of his bags and all of the research he'd hastily packed back into the trunk while Sam dozed lightly in the front seat in the late morning sun. Not only was the kid not up for any sort of physical activity, including something as limited as walking, but they weren't getting him out of the car if they didn't have to.

Managing to get his weak butt into the low-riding muscle car had been a comedy skit in the making.

Dean grabbed their duffle full of sawed-offs and handguns, intending to toss it further into the trunk until he had time to put everything back in its proper place beneath the hidden panel, when he knocked his go-bag off of its current spot propped on the spare gas tank and canisters of holy water. The contents toppled out of his bag almost lazily, taunting him for not taking the time to close the damn zipper before he'd shoved the thing in the trunk with their other bags.

The hunter moved to toss everything back inside, annoyed and already at his tension limit for the week, when a glint of gold caught his eye. The amulet Sam had given him fourteen years ago stared up at him from the floor of the trunk, right beneath his outstretched hand.

The man from the future stared at the little horned head and sightless eyes perfectly propped between a Black Sabbath shirt and his FBI badge. Raising his head with a discretion that was wholly unnecessary, the hunter peaked between the raised trunk and windshield to stare at the back of his brother's head.

Dean Winchester didn't believe in signs and he believed even less in the God that would be sending this one. But as he stared at the one thing in life he did have faith in, and always would, he made a decision to listen, just this once.

Scooping the amulet up, he shoved his clothes to the side, threw the duffel of weapons on top, and shut the trunk. Time would tell if it was as dumb-ass a decision as he suspected.

Sam opened his eyes as Dean climbed into the driver's seat. His brother was looping something around the rear view mirror, catching Sam's attention. He sat up a little more, blinking the exhaustion from his eyes, and stared at the amulet dangling just beneath the mirror.

Dean chanced a glance his way, then cleared his throat at the surprise and muddled emotion there. Ignoring the utter chick-flick moment that a high school playwright would surely swoon over in years to come, the older Winchester put the car in drive and headed for Ford City, Nebraska.

-o-o-o-

They called John from the road.

It, of course, went to voicemail. Neither were surprised. They left the message about the Baku and hung up.

There wasn't much point in saying anything else.

-o-o-o-

"You are such a liar."

Sam laughed weakly in the front seat, somehow amused by all of this despite the fact that he was definitely a shade more grey than he had been at the hospital. He stared out the rain-speckled window at the white tent and large sign proclaiming the True Believers Revival Church.

"Shaddup," Dean muttered, turning off the engine and leaning over to look out Sam's window as well.

"Dean, no way you believe this crap. So what are we doing here?"

His brother spared him a look that said he really, really didn't want to answer. "You don't think he's the real deal?"

Sam let out another laugh, though it dipped into a cough at the end that had Dean digging into the pharmacy bag for his meds and handing one of the muscle relaxers over. The younger hunter looked loathe to take it, but did so anyway.

"Sure, he could be. I believe there's just as much good in this world as evil." He swallowed down the pill and leaned his head back against the leather, still watching his brother. He looked completely wiped out. "But I know you don't. So what's really going on?"

His older brother hesitated before bobbing his head in that way of his that said he wasn't going to lie but he wasn't going to give a straight answer either. "The pastor's wife hooked a reaper."

Sam blinked at him slowly, and it was a testament to the damage in his system that it took him a comically long time to parse Dean's meaning. When he did, his eyes widened and he immediately sat up, triggering another coughing spell. Dean was ready for it, already pushing him back into the seat with a gentle hand and an offered water bottle.

The young Winchester tried to talk twice before he was ready, finally having to concede the battle and slow down enough to drink the water.

"Dean, no." He shook his head minuscule as soon as he was able, afraid to trigger another bout of pounding pain. "You are not trading my life for someone else's."

"Yeah, thanks for the update, Spock. I'm aware." He looked back out the front window and added on, muttered slow lowly that Sam almost didn't catch it, "If that was the plan, I wouldn't have told you."

The look Sam gave his brother was not a kind one. And maybe if he didn't think he'd be dead in a week, he'd have raised hell about his brother even considering going behind his back about something like that.

"If the reaper is killing people, even to save lives, we have to stop it. That's murder."

"I know, Sammy. Damn it, I mean _Sam_." Dean sighed raggedly and pinched the bridge of his nose. But he went for the door handle all the same, pushing open the driver's side. "And there's no _we_ in this one. You sit your ass there and rest. I'll take care of it."

"Dean?" His brother stopped moving, one foot out of the car and his hand on the steering wheel. He looked over his shoulder at him and it was obvious to the younger hunter how hard his brother was trying to hide the fear in his eyes. "Sammy's fine."

Green eyes stared at him, incredulous at first before they hardened into something almost dangerous. Certainly angry. He climbed back fully in the car, pulling the door shut with a harsh sound. "Don't you dare. Don't you start making speeches."

"I'm not-"

"You're _not_ dying, Sam. I won't let you. So don't start with the goodbye concessions."

Sam stared at his brother, gaze sympathetic. Dean hated it. They weren't having this conversation again. He went for the door handle when a knock startled both of them.

A young, cute blonde stood on the other side of Sam's window. She was smiling gently at them, a stern-faced woman with an umbrella standing just behind her, looking both impatient and concerned all in one, constipated expression. Sam took great effort to roll the window down, wheezing once he'd finished.

"Are you going to sit out here all day, or come in?"

Dean remembered Layla Rourke's smile like it was yesterday and his heart contracted so strongly in his chest that he suddenly couldn't breathe.

My god. He was going to kill this woman _twice._

Sam grinned up at her, both playful and sincere in only the way Sam Winchester could be. "My brother doesn't believe in faith healers."

Layla's smile grew wider and more than a little playful as she winked at the ailing hunter. "Well, lucky for you, he doesn't look like the one in need of healing."

She opened Sammy's door and carefully stepped back in the mud. "Come on, I'll walk you in."

Sam gave his brother a look like ' _You coming?'_ as he took Layla's hand and let her help him out of the Impala.

Dean, halfway to telling his brother to get his broken, dying ass back into the car and rest while he go ganked a reaper, instead scrubbed a hand roughly through his hair to avoid punching the steering wheel out of sheer stress. He threw open his door and followed after the pair with utterly no clue what he was going to do when they got inside.

-o-o-o-

The next morning, Sam weakly passed his laptop over to Dean, an article pulled up about a local woman who had died the day before, complications from a stroke the article said. Only she was twenty-four, had no prior history of medical problems, and ran a local abortion clinic that was currently in a rather nasty feud with a particularly conservative church less than a city block away.

"You were right."

Dean didn't need to read the article. Roy had cured an older man last night, there with his wife, three kids, and eight grandkids, all praying grandpa would be cured from the debilitating and ultimately fatal complications of a massive stroke.

"I know."

"Then why didn't you stop it?" The anger in Sam's voice didn't surprise him, but the strength of it did. He scrubbed a hand down his face and got up from the small table, pacing the room. Sam watched his every move. "You didn't stop it because you still haven't decided if you're going to use it. Dean, you are not trading my life for some innocent person's!"

"I know, Sammy!" The haggard hunter spun around and he looked so, so very tired. He threw his arms out, defeat in every line of his body. "I know, okay? Living with that would kill you. Believe me, I get it, better than anybody!"

Because he still carried that guilt himself, to this day, for a teacher in another life who had died so he could live. He slumped down on the bed. "But I'm not losing you."

Sam watched his brother falling apart before his eyes and swallowed past the growing lump in his throat caused by more than just his failing body. He knew that Dean had abandonment issues, and he knew he'd only reinforced those time and time again throughout their childhood. But his brother was a rock, strong in ways Sam couldn't even begin to match.

He wrongly assumed Dean would be fine without him.

"Okay," he whispered, causing his older brother to look up, already fighting to hide the water in his green eyes because heaven forbid he should shed an unmanly tear while talking about the inevitable death of his own brother. "I believe you, Dean. You'll find a way to save me. But this isn't it."

-o-o-o-

The afternoon service was about to start and Dean still hadn't gotten out of the car. Sam was watching him, caught somewhere between a lecture and a laugh. He rarely ever saw his older brother hesitate, and it was clear Dean was fighting himself and getting nowhere.

Sam had made his wishes crystal clear that morning; they would find another way.

"What are you going to do?" He settled on a neutral question. No need to spark Dean's temper or current anxieties.

"Hell if I know," his brother muttered back, but it got him opening the Impala door. "Just stay in the car this time, alright?"

Sam answered by leaning his head against the back of the seat and watching his brother struggle his way through the mud and into the tent.

-o-o-o-

As the minutes ticked by, he stared at the roof of the Impala and contemplated calling Jess.

They'd been e-mailing back and forth pretty regularly, and he sometimes snuck away at night to sit in the Impala and just listen to her voice as she talked about her day, or her parents, or how good it was to spend some time back in her hometown.

In some ways, it was the best part of Sam's day. In others, it was an awkward dance that he knew would eventually come to an end. Sam could never lie to her, but Jess would want to know how he was doing and he couldn't really answer without telling her more of the truths and horrors in his life than he wanted to. On the rare occasions he did breakdown and discuss a hunt, or the search for their father, or the yellow-eyed demon, he could hear the uncertainty in her voice as she tried to support and care for him from afar. She didn't know how to broach the supernatural aspect of Sam's life, and he didn't want to involve her in it anyway.

Still, he loved hearing how she was doing, back in a world without monsters and demons. Back in a life he used to have.

He should probably call her.

Jess expressed her fear pretty early on in his road trip that one day she would just stop hearing from him. That she would never know what happened, only that he was likely dead.

Sam had made Dean swear, on pain of being haunted for the rest of his life by an irate ghost, to tell Jess should anything like that happen. The older Winchester waved it off with a 'nothing will, relax', but eventually Sam got him to promise all the same.

And something like it did happen, in the end.

The youngest Winchester sighed and closed his eyes. He should call her. He didn't have much hope in any of Dean's backup plans, though for the sake of his brother he would give each of them the chance Dean thought they deserved. Maybe he could hold off calling Jess for a little while longer. Just in case his brother did pull a miracle out of nowhere.

-0-0-0-

He was almost asleep, lulled by the warmth of the sun and the safe cocoon of the Impala's interior, when a knock on glass startled him awake. Sam sat up, looking to the driver's side window and expecting to see his temperamental brother climbing into the car, or perhaps the young woman from yesterday come to fetch him again.

The person who did climb into the car had Sam startled all the way off the seat, out of the vehicle, and stumbling through the mud.

"Now, now," Yellow Eyes held out his hands in placation, a look of mock worry on his face as he leaned over into the passenger's side of Impala so he could look up at Sam through his still open door. "Easy there, son. We wouldn't want you keeling over before it's time."

Sam couldn't tell if his struggle to breathe came from the pounding in his heart or in his head. He clenched at his shirt as he bent near-over trying to catch a wisp of air and not pass out from the rushing in his brain. The demon sat patiently in the car, watching him with an idyllic look on his borrowed face.

Damn it, he had nothing. No weapons, no holy water. He'd mistakenly assumed the Impala was safe. The colt was in the devil-trapped trunk, and even as his eyes darted too it, Yellow Eyes tsk'ed.

"Lot of innocents around, Sammy." He smiled up at the ailing man as the hunter straightened, shoving his hurts away by sheer force of will. "We wouldn't want things to get messy, now would we?"

Sam clenched his fists by his sides and, wheezing, bit out, "Only my brother calls me that."

The demon was climbing out of the car with the energy of a kid seeing the circus for the first time and the hunter stumbled back through the muddy ground to keep his distance. Yellow Eyes turned raised his hands in a truce.

"I'm not here to cause trouble. I'm actually here to help."

"I doubt that," the hunter shot back.

Yellow Eyes didn't seem phased by his vitriol in the slightest. He just kept grinning at the hunter. "Pushing your powers. Now that's something else, tiger. I knew I was picking the right horse when I bet on you."

Sam swayed slightly, but held his ground against his waning strength. "Bet on me for _what_?"

"Big things, Sammy."

"I told you, only my brother gets to call me that."

"Yes. Your brother." The demon's eyes shifted over Sam's shoulder to the tent behind him and the hunter stiffened. "The last minute entry in all this. He's got us quite abuzz downstairs."

He fluttered his fingers in a jazz hands motion and Sam frowned at the theatrics. Whatever the demon wanted, he sure was taking his sweet time getting to it. The hunter wondered what the odds were of him passing out before the murderer got to his point.

The demon seemed to notice his fading attention span and clasped his hands together like a businessman about to make a deal. Dread pooled in Sam's gut, but there was little he could do about it.

"Do you know who it is talking to him, kiddo? We'd really like to know. We denizens of Hell frown on cheating when we're not the ones doing it."

Sam pulled a face that clearly expressed his answer.

"Like hell you aren't. One of you is 'betting' on Dean just like you are with me." The hunter held his arms out in a move of self-deprecation. "Guess what, you picked the wrong horse."

Yellow Eyes tilted his head and a flicker of confusion turned quickly into curiosity"Oh, kiddo. Dean's not in this race."

Sam dropped his arms. "What?"

The demon leaned back against the Impala, watching the kid with amusement. "He may be a contender for the Triple Crown, but we're not there yet. Hell, we're haven't even made it to the Kentucky Durby. And unlike you, your brother's not one of my entries."

The hunter scrambled to follow the stupid metaphor. "One?"

The demon grinned, shoving off the car towards him. Sam stumbled back for every step he took forward, but the human lost ground easily. "That's right. My special kids. You're on of 'em, Sammy, but I gotta admit: you're my favorite. Because you _push_. You've got a drive the others don't. And it's going to serve you well."

Sam snorted, and winced at the spike of pain it sent through his head. "Yeah, it's serving me great right now."

Yellow Eyes suddenly split into a 100-watt smile and reached behind his back. Sam raised his arms, prepared to fight by hand if he had to. When the demon pulled back, he was holding a large mason jar filled with a thick, dark liquid, and nothing more. The hunter stared at it dubiously as Yellow Eyes raised it up to eye level like a prized jewel.

"You just pushed yourself a little further than you're ready for." The demon bounced the jar up and down, and the liquid within sloshed along the sides, painting the glass crimson red. "But I can help fix that. No reaper needed, no innocent life lost for little ole you."

Sam took a step back, staring at the jar with a growing sense of trepidation. "What is that?"

"What does it look like, kiddo?"

The hunter stared at the liquid, then the demon. He squared his shoulders, keeping a defiant chin and a strong stance, despite feeling anything but. "It looks like blood."

"Bullseye! Shooting straight down the center, Sam. That's what I like about you." Yellow Eyes jiggled the container playfully. "This here is demon blood. A pint of yours truly."

Sam took another step back, eyes widening. Crap. Blood had been bad enough, but whatever the demon planned to do with that much of his own blood was probably a lot worse. Yellow Eyes let him gain the distance without closing in on him.

"See, the reason you're sick is because you're overdue for an oil change. Just need more of what you've already got in you."

The youngest Winchester paled as his injured brain registered the creature's meaning. The dread in his stomach solidified to a concrete slab, sinking deep within his bones. "Wh-what?"

"That night in the nursery. The night I killed your mommy," the demon winked his way and Sam's anger spiked through his fear and revulsion for a moment of crystal clarity. "I gave you your first taste. Bled in your mouth, tiger, and now you've got super powers! Not a bad trade, right?"

"You're insane." Sam shook his head. "I'm not drinking that, even if what you say is true. _Especially_ if what you say is true."

The demon tsk'ed, looking down at the container of blood. "Come on now, kiddo. You're not the martyr of the family. That's your brother's job. You want to go back to your nine-to-five life and that pretty gal o' yours? Can't live happily ever after if you're dead."

"I can't play your sick game if I'm dead either."

Yellow Eyes sucked air through his teeth as he kept the smile up, but it turned a touch more dangerous.

"Sam?" Both hunter and demon turned at the soft, uncertain voice coming from behind him. Layla was standing just a few feet away, having come out of the tent looking for the ailing boy missing from the service. Her eyes darted between the two men. "Is…Is everything okay?"

"Yes," Sam answered hastily, holding his hand out to keep her from coming any closer. "Everything is fine, Layla. Go back inside."

God, if the demon attacked her, there was nothing Sam could do. He glanced back at Yellow Eyes with a warning, but the demon just raised his eyebrows and looked wounded at the accusation in those brown eyes.

He turned his gaze to the woman, and got a thrill of enjoyment at the way Sam tensed and slid a step over to stand between them.

"My dear, perhaps you can help us. I'm trying to convince Sam here that I've got the miracle cure he needs."

"Right." The blonde rolled her eyes at him before focusing back on the hunter. "Sam, why don't you walk me back inside?"

Yellow Eyes laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. "Such cynicism from the follower of a faith healer!"

Layla lost her false calm and sweet smile, staring at the demon with a fierceness Sam found remarkable. "I've seen what Roy can do. His healing is real."

She held her hand out once more for Sam, but the yellow-eyed demon wasn't done yet.

"Oh, if it's a demonstration that you need, please; allow me to prove myself."

The two humans turned slowly back to the demon. His tone was not a request and Layla glanced at Sam nervously. Courageous as she may, she could sense the danger coming off the man in waves.

He held the jar out towards the hunter, a dangerous glint in his eye. "Come on, tiger. Let's show Layla here what a real miracle looks like."

The hunter heard the threat and closed his eyes. Damn it, the demon would kill her in a heartbeat if Sam refused. And the boy wasn't about to stand by while another innocent woman suffered from just knowing him, just from being brave and facing down danger to stand beside him.

No, he wasn't letting it happen again.

"Heal her first." He opened his eyes and locked a fierce, challenging gaze on the demon. "She has a brain tumor. Get rid of it and I'll do it."

"Done." The demon smiled widely and turned to Layla. "Run along now, your part here is over."

She glanced between the very dangerous thing standing feet from her and the sweet boy she'd come outside to get because she believed he deserved healing as much as she did. "Sam-"

He gave her a soft nod. "Go, Layla."

It was the urgency in his voice that finally did it. She turned and started towards the tent at as fast a pace as she dared. By the time she hit the opening she was running.

Sam turned back to the yellow-eyed demon only to find him standing right in front of him, jar of blood held out. The hunter stumbled back a step by instinct, but steeled himself as he found his balance.

He'd made a deal, and Layla's life was worth it.

The youngest Winchester took the container, stomach revolting at the cold touch of glass with a hint of warmth running under the surface. The demon stood, observant as Sam unscrewed the lid and, watching those yellow irises, raised it to his lips.

His stomach nearly upended that morning's meager breakfast at the first metallic gulp that slid down his throat like oil sludge. He coughed, pulling the jar away and gasping down the urge to vomit.

"All of it, Sammy. Or you won't grow big and strong."

The hunter glared at the demon, but took a deep breath tossed back the rest of the jar.

The empty glass sank into the mud as he fell to his knees. He heard Dean screaming his name from across the parking lot. But it, and everything else around him, was quickly overcome by the pounding of blood through his veins.


	18. Season 1: Chapter 17

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _- **A/Ns** : Another weekly update! I'm feeling better about my stockpile of chapters, even with the second week of crazy 11 hour work days (ugh!). I didn't want to leave you guys hanging for too long on that last cliffhanger. However, be warned that this chapter underwent less editing than I usually do, which leaves the writing feeling a little rough around the edges in my opinion. So apologies for that and any errors I missed. _

_**-Chapter Warnings:** The boys get a brief respite to catch their breath before the leap from frying pan to the fire._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 17

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The minute he met those pale yellow irises, Azazel was gone.

Dean took off across the parking lot all the same, hard and fast as his feet could carry him over the wet ground towards his collapsed brother. Sam was on his hands and knees in the mud, hacking up what could very well be his lungs at this point.

"Sammy!"

Layla had come running into the tent, lungs gasping for breath and fear in her eyes. Lucky for him, he'd been making a hasty retreat towards the exit before the whole congregation figured out Roy wasn't healing anyone anymore, or before Sue Ann made a bigger scene than she already had behind the make-shift church as she tried to gather the shattered remains of her Coptic cross.

Now, Layla was hot on his heels as they raced through the mud.

"Where did that man go?" She huffed from behind him, worry still coloring the edges of her voice with fear.

Dean didn't bother answering. He had more important things on his mind; mainly, his brother currently spitting up blood and dry heaving in the mud. The hunter fell to his knees beside his brother, grabbing him by the shoulders. "Sam!"

"I-I'm okay," his brother managed to wheeze between heaves and gasps. He wiped clumsily at his mouth but his hands were filthy and did nothing but smear mud across his face.

"What did he do to you? Where are you hurt?" Dean frantically felt his brother for injuries, for whatever was causing the bleeding. He checked his face and his unfocused gaze before Sam finally pushed him away.

"I'm fine," he insisted, and when Dean took a moment to really see him, he looked it. Color had returned to his cheeks and he didn't look nearly as sallow or pale as he had when Dean left him in the car fifteen minutes ago. "I feel….Okay. I-I feel good."

"What?" Confused, Dean glanced around, mainly out of the hunter-trained habit of ensuring they were not in any immediate danger. His eyes stopped on the empty jar lying beside his brother in the mud. The mud-covered glass was ringed in still dripping red and Dean's stomach tightened as he picked it up and a coppery scent tainted the air.

"Sam….What is this?" He held it up to his brother, grip threatening to break the glass. "What was in here?"

Brown eyes locked on the jar and Dean had his answer in the fear and revulsion in his brother's face. His hands shook as he tried once more to sit upright on unsteady limbs. Layla offered a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"Sam?"

"Bl-" The young man swallowed thickly, looking away from the container and the reminder of what sat heavy in his gut and pulsed through his veins. "Blood."

Layla hid her gaps behind her hands, staring between the two boys in horror. Dean could see the red dripping down Sam's chin now, despite the kid swiping across his mouth and throat once more. The blood and mud dripped from his skin and puddled in the mess below.

Dean dropped the jar. Numbness overtook the man from the future as Sam continued to insist he felt fine. Better, even, than he had since the hospital.

-o-o-o-

"There's no evidence of any damage," the doctor announced with a smile as she handed over the MRI results. Sam took them, still staring in disbelief. She patted his shoulder. "Try not to worry so much. A man of your age, in your physical condition? You've nothing to worry about."

He looked to his brother, but Dean was staring at the wall, jaw clenched and shoulders taut. Something dark sat heavy in Dean's eyes, but Sam didn't know what it was, and his brother was barely talking to him.

-o-o-o-

They sat in the Impala, parked outside their motel. They'd been sitting there for several minutes, neither of the brothers moving to get out of the car. Sam was having trouble shaking off the events of the last twenty four hours. Or the truths that he'd learned.

Dean…Dean didn't know what to think. What to do. Demon blood hadn't even been on the list of things to fix Sammy. Hell, if it had been, it would have been at the damn bottom, below selling his soul and summoning fucking Gabriel in a ring of Holy Oil.

And what now? Jesus, were they looking at blood addiction again? Last time it had been gradual. Ruby started him off slow and built up his intake over months and months. What was going to happen with a friggin pint chug?

Dean scrubbed at his scalp and face, his chest constricted and head pounding in despair. Jesus Christ, he really was making everything so much worse and he had no idea how to stop it.

"Did you take care of the reaper?"

The question was as bland as the rest of his brother, who sat numbly in the passenger seat, staring at a blank world outside their car and seeing none of it.

"Yeah," Dean mumbled in reply. "Released the hold the wife had on him. Pretty sure he took care of her himself."

Sam nodded, not seeming the least bit regretful of the human life lost. Not that he necessarily should. Sue Ann brought it on herself, playing God and deciding who lived and who died based on her own warped sense of morality.

"Why would you drink it?" The words were out of Dean's mouth before he could think them through. Yeah, sure, that was a question he wanted answers to. Right along with _Are you sure you're alright? Not feeling any murderous, blood-sucking cravings, are you? Do I need to drive us straight to Bobby's and lock you in the panic room?_

Of everything he could ask though, choosing the one that absolutely made it sound like this was all Sammy's fault was really, really not what he'd meant to do.

"Layla was there," Sam bit out defensively, shooting his brother a wounded glare before retuning his gaze to his hands. He didn't have the energy to fight about this, and it had nothing to do with having been on the brink of death five hours ago. Really, he felt fine now. Better than fine, he felt….strong.

Maybe stronger than before he'd ended up in the hospital. It was hard to tell.

He clenched his hands into fists in his lap. "He would have killed her. I didn't exactly a choice, Dean."

Beside him, his brother let out a haggard sigh, slumping in the driver's seat. "I know."

The two brothers were silent, but the tension laying thick in the car was no longer between them, so much as around them. Sam took a deep breath.

"He said…he said I needed more of what I already had in me." The younger hunter chanced a look at his brother, and his gaze was pained and so damn terrified. "That night in the nursery…"

"He said that?" Dean echoed quietly, staring at his kid brother with a pain of his own.

"If Yellow Eyes did that to me as a kid…" Sam trailed off. "He told me he bled in my mouth that night and that's why I have visions. Mom must have…must have-"

"Don't." Dean shook his head violently. "Look at me, Sammy. If Mom saw him that night, she would have fought tooth and nail to save you."

He thought about the fierce, spitfire hunter that Mary Winchester had been in 1973. Yeah, she would have given Azazel hell for setting foot in her house, let alone threatening her son. He knew she'd look at her life as small change for the fight to keep Sammy safe.

"What happened that night…It wasn't your fault."

Sam was staring at him with water gathering in his eyes that he fought back valiantly. He wiped haphazardly at his eyes, and sniffing as he looked away with a nod. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

After a moment of silence, he pushed on.

"If Yellow Eyes did that to me…" Sam swallowed and looked at his brother, eyes darting to his chest and then back to his face, "then maybe _Cass_ did something to you."

The hunter was shaking his head before he'd even finished, and Sam clenched his teeth in a flare of anger. He was tired of Dean keeping secrets. He was tired of being lied to. He no longer knew if his brother just couldn't see it, or if he was in so deep that there was nothing left he could do about it. Either way, it was damn time they talked about it.

"Dean, the visions you're having, that pain in your chest; maybe this demon is after you like Yellow Eyes is me! He said we were entries in a race. Some sort of…Battle Royale, I don't know. But if I'm his 'entry,' than maybe this Cass _-_ "

"Cas isn't a demon." It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself, with such conviction that he knew he couldn't take it back.

Not that he was sure he wanted to. Something sat ugly in his chest every time Sam called Cas a demon. He wasn't sure if it was how close to the truth that had almost gotten at the end, with Lucifer sitting pretty in a Cas-shaped time-share, or if he just couldn't stand the thought of Sam thinking he was in bed with one.

Sam was watching him, waiting. He didn't say a word, though his eyes dared Dean to clam up. Damn that kid for knowing Dean's weaknesses; he'd never been good at silence. He wrung the leather of Baby's steering wheel in his hands, staring at the motel door on the other side of the windshield. His gut twisted. He couldn't believe what he was about to say.

"Look, I got no proof, okay?" He spared Sam a glance. "Nothing to back-up the complete crazy I'm about to tell you. And trust me, it's going to sound crazy."

Sam regarded him for a moment before nodding solemnly. His hardened stare turned a little softer. "I believe you, Dean. Whatever it is, you can tell me."

Dean had to swallow several times around the giant lump in his throat. God, he hoped this didn't fuck up the timeline irreparably.

Of course…could he really make it much worse than it already was?

"Cas- _Castiel_ is an angel."

He waited a beat, the silence in the small space damn near crushing.

"Like, of the Lord."

Yeah, awesome, that sounded about as convincing as Peewee Herman proclaiming he was a weight-lifting champion. This conversation was going fantastically. Well, the world hadn't ended yet, so he supposed it could be going worse.

Silence settled in the car like sludge and Dean wrung the wheel again and again until the leather started creaking beneath his grip.

"Okay."

The older hunter's head whipped to the side to take in his brother, who looked contemplative and not nearly as skeptical or pissed as he should be.

"What?"

"I believe you."

"You…What? Just like that?"

Sam gave a half shrug that was way too casual and calm for the bombshell Dean just dropped. "Demons are real. Why wouldn't angels be?"

"Seriously?!"

His brother spared him a glance that Dean immediately found patronizing. "You sound like _you_ don't believe he's an angel."

"Oh, I believe it," he scoffed. In fact, that was one of the few things in this current Alternate Timeline Clusterfuck that he had any confidence in. And he was totally not clinging to it like a life raft on the titanic, with him as the drowned rat from stowage. Not at all. "I just needed something a little more concrete than his _word_."

Sam perked up at the muttered admission, eyebrows rising into his hairline. "Like what?"

What would an angel show to prove himself to a paranoid, black and white, distrustful hunter like his brother?

Dean mumbled something, blatantly avoiding eye contact with his brother as his ears flushed red. And God, not even he knew why he was blushing at the memory of that night in the barn, where a pair of shadows had him almost shitting his pants.

Embarrassment at needing a new pair of pants. That was definitely it.

"What was that?"

Dean grumbled and repeated himself, louder than necessary this time. "He showed me his wings, alright?"

Curiosity lit Sam's eyes like a fat kid in a donut shop. "Really? What were they like? Were they…like a bird's? With feathers?"

The man from the future rolled his eyes. Of course his nerd brother would want to play 60 questions about an angel's friggin' wings. He didn't know, he'd never actually asked the guy about them!

"No. I mean- maybe. All I saw were shadows," Dean answered lamely, refusing to look at his brother. Well great, that didn't sound totally made up at all. Shit, if Sam asked for further proof, what the hell was he gonna give him?

"…Did he have a halo?"

He could hear the way Sam was barely holding back a snigger and shot him a dirty glare.

"Alright, shaddup." He pushed open the door of the Impala and declared the conversation over.

-o-o-o-

"You seriously believe me?"

Sam dropped the last of his clothes into the duffel bag on the motel bed. He glanced at his brother. When he saw the look in his eye, like he desperately needed his brother to say yes but couldn't believe it would be the truth, he turned and gave him his full attention.

"Dean, I know you're hiding stuff – _still_ hiding stuff," he emphasized, and the hunter across the room decided not to feel gut-crushing guilt at that by sheer force of will, "but I trust you. If you're sure it's an angel talking to you, then okay."

Dean didn't respond right away, mulling over the sasquatch's words before settling on the best response he had that wouldn't push further or start a fight. Well. Much of a fight. "You are such a nerd."

"And you are a jerk," Sam responded in kind, turning back to the last of their packing. They should hit the road and get back to the search for Dad, now that they knew what it was hunting him. "What I'd like to know is why an angel and a demon would bother with us in the first place. That sounds….big, Dean. Like, biblical, ugly big."

Across the room, Dean's hand tightened on the shotgun he was sliding into his duffel.

 _Oh Sammy, you have no idea._

-o-o-o-

Dean offered to load the bags while Sam jumped in the shower. He had wiped off the mud and changed into a clean set of clothes before they stopped at the hospital, but he still felt dirty. Dean had more than understood and ventured outside to get Baby ready for the road and give his brother some space.

The water fell heavy across Sam's shoulders as he braced himself against the tile wall. He felt heavy and light all in the same breath, and had since the church.

He stared at his hand, spread across the warm tiles. He flexed the tendons in his fingers, watching the flexors slide over his knuckles, like serpents just under his skin. Water slid down the back of his hand in tiny rivulets.

There was something there. Something just beneath the surface. It might have always been there; he couldn't say with certainty that it had. Maybe he'd felt it before. Always. Felt it when he stood beside his brother and his father and hunted things he didn't want to hunt. Faced evil he wasn't always sure was evil. Became a killer when he didn't want to kill.

Maybe he'd felt it, sitting in a lecture hall with people he would never fit in with, in a world he didn't belong to. Normal kids, who didn't know about the darkness in the world. Who didn't have it in them.

Maybe he'd felt it, lying in bed with Jess curled against his body, his arms wrapped around her as he desperately bathed in her light and love and goodness.

Maybe it had always been there.

His fingers curled against the tile and it creaked and strained beneath his nails. Sam pulled away suddenly, both terrified and thrilled at the micro-fissures running across the smooth surface. The boy turned away from the tiles. They were old and already crumbling, like the rest of the motel. Grabbing the soap, he focused on scrubbing the dirt and past from his skin and forced himself to stop thinking. To stop looking.

Because whether or not it had been there before, something was there now. Just beneath the surface.

Sam had always been fit. But now….now he could feel the strength, just beneath the surface, pulsing with the flow of his blood. It called to him as much as it scared him, and he couldn't help but question which side of that war was going to win.

-o-o-o-

Layla Rourke caught them on their way out of the motel, and Dean looked between her and his brother, confused. This had happened last time, he remembered, but they'd spent far fewer time with her this go around. His heart ached at the idea of having another conversation of faith with the dying woman, especially knowing God as he did now, and where belief got you in this world.

"Hey," she greeted them softly, looking more uncertain than Dean ever remembered seeing her. She smiled at them, but with a tremor of something in the expression that he didn't know what to do with. Layla was hardly afraid of them, but there was fear in the way she played with her hands and couldn't quite settle her eyes anywhere. "Sam called me. I hope that's alright."

"Of course," Dean answered, setting the last bag he was carrying onto the trunk of the Impala. Sam offered her a quick hug in greeting. She looked like she needed the physical reassurance.

"I suppose this is goodbye…" Layla pulled away from Sam after a moment, glancing between the two of them hesitantly. "Mom and I went to the doctor. She- I….I haven't run like I did back there in….in years."

Dean glanced at Sam, confusion sparking in his green eyes. His brother just looked regretful, but there was a vein of strength – relief – in the line of his shoulders.

"The tumor is…it's gone."

The older of the two stared at her, slack-jawed. She gave him a weak smile but turned to Sam, the expression becoming far more brittle. "That man-"

"Don't, Layla," the taller man answered softly. He offered a grim smile of his own. "You're better off not knowing. I'm just glad you're okay."

She stared up at him, tears in her eyes but her nod was firm. "And Sue Ann? Did you hear what happened to… R-Roy can't…Oh God, poor Roy."

Dean took an aborted step forward, then stopped, and finally followed through to wrap the shaking woman in a gentle hug. "He'll be alright, Layla. Roy's a good man. He- he didn't deserve what happened."

Sam was staring at him, brow furled. Dean shook his head minutely. Later.

Her arms came up around his back as she leaned into his supportive weight. She hardly knew this man, either of these men, and yet… She was sure that they had somehow saved her life, in ways that Roy never could have.

-o-o-o-

Sam sat in the Impala, staring out the windshield as Layla and Dean talked quietly a few feet away. She had asked for a moment alone with the older Winchester, so Sam gave her a farewell hug and ducked inside the car to give them some semblance of privacy.

Keeping half an eye on his brother, Sam pulled a small notebook out the bag stuffed in the footwell of the Impala and dug around for a pen. Dean glanced to him a couple times as he mumbled replies to Layla's questions on faith, and what happened now.

Sam may be healed, however miraculously (or otherwise), but that only seemed to triple Dean's protective, paranoid mother-henning. Being fixed up by a demon free of charge in exchange for chugging blood probably warranted some of that concern.

Knowing Dean wouldn't leave him unattended for long, the young hunter uncapped the pen, flipped to a random page, and quickly jotted down a note so he wouldn't forget to follow up on his suspicions.

 _Castiel = Angel_

 _Angels =_ _Good_ _?_

He shoved the notebook back in his bag without further detail as Dean hugged Layla goodbye and headed for the driver side door.

-o-o-o-

As Dean climbed into the Impala, he held out his phone to his brother. There was an article pulled up on the web app for a local newspaper in Utah. Six people all in the same small town had slipped into comas over the last month. Doctors were baffled. The author noted that the CDC had been notified and an investigation could be the next logical step.

Sam raised an eyebrow. Dean had clearly been busy with more than just the car while he was in the shower.

"Could be a baku," Dean offered with a shrug as he pulled the car onto the interstate, headed west. Every nerve ending in his body twitched to take Sam straight to the panic room, but almost twenty-four hours later and he wasn't showing any signs of withdrawal. "Might be the one dad's after."

The younger Winchester studied the phone with a grim face. "Then let's go get it."

Dean revved the engine and they merged onto the highway taking them west.

-o-o-o-

They'd just crossed the Colorado border when Dean cleared his throat. "I need you to promise me you won't do that again."

Sam stared at him, confusion waring with irritation. "Dean, he would have killed Layla. I told you, it wasn't a choice."

"No, not that," Dean supplied quickly. Although, yeah, now that they were on that topic, a discussion of 'no demon deals, ever, period' followed immediately after by 'no more demon blood, exclamation mark' was going to have to happen soon too. "Don't push again, alright?"

His younger brother furled his brow at him.

"Your powers – these visions. They're…God, Sam, you can't- we can't…." He made a frustrated noise at his ever-awesome powers of speech. "Just promise me you won't try that again."

Sam swallowed thickly through the sudden lump in his throat. He turned his gaze to the asphalt sliding by beneath them in a race of yellow lines and white stripes. Yeah, that hadn't been his best move. Although, to be fair, he had no idea it would be so damaging.

Honestly, he'd thought, worst case, nothing would happen.

Twenty-four hours ago, sickly and convinced he'd be dead within the month, he would have agreed in a heartbeat. And not because he wasn't going to live long enough to ever try that trick again, but because Dean was right. Even if he couldn't articulate it, Sam's powers were clearly dangerous.

At least, they had been. Because now….

Sam looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers.

Now, he knew that if he tried again, he would be successful. He _knew_ , somehow, just beneath the surface, that he had the power to do it again and succeed this time. The only thing holding him back was fear of where that power came from, flowing in tune with his own blood. And how his brother would look at him if he tried.

"Sammy, I'm serious."

"Okay," he answered softly, releasing the tension in his hand. "No pushing. I promise."

He was pretty sure it wouldn't require much pushing anyhow. Not anymore.

-o-o-o-

A few miles down the road, Sam shifted in his seat. "Sam."

Dean arched a brow at him. "Uh…Dean. Now that introductions are out of the way…"

The younger Winchester rolled his eyes. "It's Sam, not Sammy."

There was a beat of silence.

"Oh, no. No, no, nope." Dean popped the final letter with far too much enjoyment. Brown eyes met green, and his big brother was grinning like an idiot. "You said Sammy was fine."

"I was _dying_ , Dean."

"You still said it."

Sam shook his head and his brother kept grinning like an idiot. He supposed _Sammy_ wasn't the end of the world.

-o-o-o-

They tried calling John again. The search for the coma patients in Fort Duchesne was slow. There wasn't a lot of information accessible by internet alone. They'd need to get there and start asking questions themselves.

Neither man was surprised when their call went to voicemail.

They were a little more surprised when the phone started ringing before Sam had even set it down. He shot his brother a look as he pressed the device to his ear.

"Dad?"

"Not exactly." Dean could hear Bobby's gruff voice down the line and tried not to let the tension leaking off him form into disappointment that it wasn't John calling them back. "How quick can you boys get here?"

Sam frowned over at his brother, receiving the same look in return. He switched the phone to speaker mode. "A couple hours. We just hit Colorado on the seventy-six, heading for Utah."

"Well, you better turn around." The rough voice had a tinge of regret running through it. But more than that, there was worry in his voice.

"What's going on, Bobby?" Dean glanced at the phone in his brother's hand before refocusing on the road. He flipped Baby's blinker on, pulling off on the first exit they came to with an on ramp in the opposite direction.

"It's your daddy." Sam's gaze locked on Dean's. "He's here and…he ain't waking up."


	19. Season 1: Chapter 18

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Tertiary character death (okay, I'm actually sorry about this one...), demonic bitchiness, and a little bit of African Dream Root._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 18

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **-Twenty Four Hours Earlier-**

Bobby stared at the man standing at the bottom of his front porch steps. John looked like crap. The older hunter's grip tightened on the shotgun in his hands, though the barrel remained aimed off to the side. They both knew he wouldn't use it. Probably.

John stared up at his friend through squinted, aching eyes. His whole body was bone-weary and he was pretty sure he was only standing through sheer force of will. Not that he'd ever admit it. Knowing the silence would just keep stretching between the two, he caved with a low growl. "I just need it for a couple hours."

"Don't see why I should let you," the older hunter growled back with narrowed eyes. "You called those boys of yours yet?"

"They don't need to be involved in this." John shook his head. "It's too dangerous."

"What's that make me?" Bobby huffed. "Chopped liver?"

The hunter rolled his eyes. The damn old man knew what he meant. "You can take care of yourself."

Bobby eyed him for a long moment before he finally lowered the shotgun and stepped aside. "So can those boys."

John didn't bother responding, but he did give a grateful nod as he passed the hunter and entered the Singer home. The two old friends hadn't always been on the best of terms. Hell, they were rarely on good terms. But Bobby always pulled through for him, especially when he showed up unannounced at his front door.

Usually with two boys in tow.

"I just need to get a couple hours sleep where this thing can't reach me." John set his duffel down, the clack of metal barrels within a surefire tell of what the canvas bag was full of. "Then I'll be out of your hair."

"If I got any hair left by the time you and your boys are done runnin' through here," Bobby muttered even as he set the shotgun down on hgis desk and headed for the basement door. "The panic room ain't gonna do much good against a dream walker, you know."

Shaking his head, the tired hunter headed past him and down the stairs. "It's not a walker. It's the demon."

Tensing, Bobby glanced at the shotgun before he descended after the younger man. It wouldn't do much good against a demon anyway.

"You're not bringing that thing down on my house, are you?" It wouldn't be the first time John had disregarded friends to catch his prey. The hunter had a reputation of doing whatever it took. Which was why most of the hunting community stayed the hell away from the Winchesters.

John cast him an annoyed glance as he pulled open the door to the panic room. "It can't find me. It's why I know it's him."

At Bobby's frown, he explained, "I keep dreaming of people: Mary, the boys, civilians from old cases. They keep asking me where I am. Over and over again, every night." He shook his head as he pulled off his jacket and climbed onto the cot in the corner, not bothering with the sheet or blanket. "It's how I knew something was wrong. Luckily, I haven't given any of them an answer."

Something about that seemed…off to Bobby. Demons weren't known for entering dreams. At least, none that he'd ever heard. But then again, given the shit Sam and Dean were currently swimming through, what did he know?

He was only the most researched expert on the supernatural this side of the Atlantic and Pacific.

-o-o-o-

He rubbed his eyes as he closed the last book he had on demons. Nothing in that one either about yellow eyes or dream walking. Not that he hadn't damn well searched every book he owned the first time John came to him asking about yellowed-eyed creatures.

He'd thought maybe the dream walking would present a new clue.

The old hunter glanced at the clock on the book shelf behind him. It'd been nearly nine hours, and John hadn't re-surfaced. He needed the rest, that was for sure. Bobby wouldn't expect anyone else to be up and about after four days of no sleep for another six hours, at least.

But this was John Winchester they were talking about. He should have been back on his feet being a pain in Bobby's ass after about four.

He climbed to his feet, groaning at the creak in his bones and the several pops that ran down his spine as he stretched. Damn, he was getting too old for this crap.

Bobby downed the last of his glass of whiskey and headed for the basement stairs, which his old knees were already complaining about. He hobbled his way down them, grumbling under his breath about unthankful house guests, multi-level homes, and retirement on a beach in Guam.

Pulling open the panic room door didn't wake up John like he expected it to, nor did calling his name. Bobby crossed the room with some trepidation and stared down at the hunter with a growing sense of concern.

The cell phone on the shelf beside the cot started vibrating, lighting up with Sam's name. John didn't even twitch.

Well, hopefully the guy didn't sleep with a knife or a gun under his pillow, Bobby groused, not really feeling like getting stabbed today. Yeah, right. What hunter didn't?

He reached out somewhat cautiously, making sure to keep outta arms reach (and knife reach too) should John rouse disoriented. He shook the hunter's shoulder, frowning when he still didn't wake. Several hard slaps later, Bobby knew he'd have to call the boys.

They were gonna be pissed.

Balls.

-o-o-o-

 **-Present-**

Dual doors slammed shut as the two hunters flew out of the Impala, parked haphazardly across Bobby's dirt drive. The screen door flew open as Dean called out the old hunter's name, moving through the house.

"Down here," came the call and the two turned to the basement door, taking the stairs down two at a time.

Bobby was waiting for them at the bottom, ball cap in hand and hair mussed from a recent run through. He hadn't been joking with John. He'd have no hair left by the time this damn nightmare was over.

"Where is he?" Dean didn't stop for the answer, already headed for the panic room even before Bobby nodded that way. Sam gave their adopted father a quick hand to the shoulder as he followed after his brother.

John was lying on the cot along the circular wall of the iron-cased panic room. He didn't look so bad, and could almost pass for asleep if it wasn't for the tight pinch in his brow and the way his hands twitched along the stiff mattress.

"Dad?" The two boys stopped by the side, Dean reaching out to check his father for injuries, feeling along his neck for a pulse too fast for his liking. Sam was kneeling next to him, trying to wake John as he called his name several times.

"Dad!" Dean barked, giving the hunter a firm slap.

"Gee, why didn't I think of that," Bobby groused from the doorway, arms crossed as he leaned against the entrance of the side. Dean spared him a glower.

"Why the hell didn't you call us when he showed up?"

"Dean." Sam sent his brother a warning glance even as he pulled away. John wasn't waking up by conventional means, and arguing and pointing fingers wasn't going to help him.

Bobby actually looked contrite, glancing away from them for a moment before tilting his chin up. "He asked me not to. Don't know why I bothered listening…"

"Why's he in the panic room?" Sam asked, glancing around them for anything stronger they could use to wake John up.

"He thought it was the demon." Bobby pulled his cap off and ran a hand through his hair again. Yup. Gonna be bald, only a matter of time. He replaced his hat. "Said he kept dreaming of people – Mary, you boys – always asking where he was."

Dean swore, glancing back at their dad.

"He figured its influence couldn't reach him in here." Bobby cast his eyes around the iron walls and up to the pentagram shadowed fan. "Lot of good it did him. I gave him a couple hours, figured he'd need it, before I tried to get him back up."

"It's the Baku," Sam explained, eyes trained on his dad as his mind flew through the material he'd read on the beast.

By the door, Bobby straightened, eyes wide. "A Baku?"

"We're pretty sure he was hunting one. I saw it in a vision," the taller of the brothers supplied.

"No, Sam." Dean kicked the edge of the cot angrily. His father's body jerked, but he didn't so much as twitch. "Bakus feed on dreams, not bodies. Why would one care where dad was?"

"But I saw it…" Sam trailed off and away from the immediate defensiveness that his brother questioning his visions always brought to the surface. Brown eyes grew wide as he parsed Dean's words. "You mean…. Shit."

"What?" Bobby asked as he strode into the room. "What the hell is goin' on, boys?"

"The Yellow Eyed Demon," Dean muttered angrily. "He's using a Baku to find dad."

Bobby swore as well. He gestured irately around the room with a roll of his eyes. "Well, no wonder the panic room did shit."

"We've gotta wake him up." Sam grabbed their dad's shoulders again, giving him a good shake even though he knew it was fruitless. "Before he tells the thing where we are."

"Do I need to worry about a demon showing up here?" Bobby asked gruffly, body rigid. He looked twitchy to get upstairs and prep the house for a friggin' war.

"He'll hold on," Dean answered with a shake of his head. "He's a tough son of a bitch. But we gotta get him away from it."

"I've got some African Dream Root." The two brothers turned surprised eyes to Bobby, who gave a little shrug. "Only time we ever got close to fighting off a Baku, Rufus and I had to tackle it on its own turf."

Dean pulled his head back. "When did you take on a Baku?"

Bobby gave him a look that clearly said what he thought of Dean acting like he knew everything the far older hunter had ever done. "Couple years back, in Alaska."

That really tripped the kid up and he stared at his surrogate father figure. "What the hell were you doing in Alaska?"

The hunter shrugged. "I was on vacation."

"In Alaska?" Dean stared at him like he was crazy. And then he looked at him again like he was far past that. "With _Rufus_?"

Sam broke the exchange up with a rather forceful clearing of his throat. "Can we focus? We need to wake Dad up, and if African Dream Root's the way to go…" He raised his hands out in exasperation.

"Come on, it's in the study," Bobby huffed, turning and heading out of the panic room and up the basement stairs with the boys right behind.

-o-o-o-

They went for Bobby's spell component cabinet right off the bat. It was a haphazard nightstand of a thing, partially leaning to the side due to a busted leg from years before. Actually, he wasn't convinced he hadn't bought it that way. The poor, ailing cabinet was shoved between two bookshelves, partially to keep it upright, despite the way it wobbled anytime you pulled open the squeaky door, and partially because he'd had to move it to the other side of the room after a particularly bad night when he mixed it up with the alcohol cabinet while on one hell of a bender. He kept nightshade in there, for Pete's sake.

Since then, it had been located as far away as possible from the equally wobbly liquor cabinet.

When they didn't find any Dream Root, the three divided up and started searching the rest of the study. The old hunter was fairly certain he had a leftover store from the last Baku. But that had been ages ago, and while it was surely in the house, there was no limit to the nooks and crannies available for hiding or misplacing things.

As they searched, Sam questioned Bobby on the last time he'd faced a Baku so they'd know what they were headed in for.

"How'd you deal with the last one? I couldn't find anything solid about killing them," the younger brother was pulling books off the shelves in consecutive order, carefully replacing them once they'd checked behind the tomes. He'd found all sorts of interesting things, including several other rare spell ingredients. Being the neat, organized person he was, he pulled them out and placed them in a pile to go back into the spell cabinet.

Dean was doing no such thing, and grinned widely at his brother when Bobby grumbled that now he'd never be able to find anything with Sam moving 'em all around.

"We didn't," Bobby answered, and found both boys looking at him questioningly. "Far as Rufus and I could figure, you _can't_ kill a Baku. They're damn near impossible to pin down, mostly 'cuz they don't got bodies on this plane."

The two Winchesters exchanged a look, and Dean seemed to lose whatever silent battle they were waging. "Then what did you do?"

The older hunter leveled a 'watch it, boy' look at slight accusation in his tone. "Scared it off, which is about as good as you _can_ do. They don't care much for bright light or loud sounds."

That sounded familiar, and Sam straightened at the revelation. "Fireworks."

Dean shot him a look. "What?"

"There's some speculation, granted it's sketchy at best, that the Baku was born from a Chinese legend and isn't Japanese at all." Sam crossed the room to pull out one of Bobby's less-worn books and he started flipping through it. "I read a story about a beast that always attacked villages on the New Year, that they think may have been the first siting of a Baku before they became well known in Japan."

The kid tossed the book on the desk between them, and the other two leaned in to read the page.

"The Nian Shao was said to attack children. A village sage eventually purified it and convinced it to eat only evil." Sam shrugged as he tapped the illustration of a creature formed together from bits and pieces of other animals. It sure has hell looked like a Baku. "Before that, the villagers were able to chase it off using fireworks. Hence their traditional usage on the Chinese New Year."

"Huh." Dean looked up at Bobby, who gave a shrug. "So…Any ideas on how to get fireworks into Dad's head?"

-o-o-o-

Turned out, the last of Bobby's African Dream Root supply was in the back of a desk drawer in a small glass jar. And there was barely any of it left.

"That's not enough to send all of us in," Bobby grumbled, pulling out one of the several books he had on African Dream Root preparation. He vaguely recalled how disgusting the drink had turned out in Alaska, and thought maybe he'd try adding some honey this time. They'd need some of John's hair as well. "Don't know if it's enough for both o' you, either."

"I'll go in," Dean announced with a firm nod and a tone they all knew well. It was one he picked right up from John and, just like the marine, it booked no argument.

Not that that ever stopped a Winchester.

"Not without me," Sam argued right back. "I'm the one who's been having visions of the Baku, Dean. I should go."

The older Winchester was silent for a moment, staring hard at his brother in a way that was more contemplative than pissed. Sam law-trained mind was already rallying all the reasons why he should join his brother, and preparing counter-arguments for all of Dean's, when the older hunter gave a firm nod.

"Alright."

Shocked silence reigned in the house, though Dean didn't seem to notice. Instead, he was moving into the kitchen, grabbing honey out of the cabinet and putting the kettle on. Bobby glanced at Sam, who was staring at him with wide, flabbergasted eyes. The old hunter had nothing, and shrugged helplessly.

"Alright?" Sam parroted as the two filed into the kitchen as well, staring at the back of the man they hardly recognized at the moment. Dean didn't notice, liberally coating a mug with honey. Then, recalling exactly how gross the root was they were about to boil and drink, coated it again with even more honey.

When he turned back around, he held it out to Bobby, who stared at it and then the hunter. With a _'what else we gonna do'_ look at Sam, he dropped the handful of dried twigs into it. Dean added a few hairs he'd snagged off their dad on the way out of the panic room. Then he handed the whole thing to his brother. All that was left was the water to boil.

Sam stared at him, still shocked. Dean finally seemed to notice the silence.

"You're right, Sammy, you should be the one to go. Just…bring him back."

Sam was still staring.

"What?"

He opened his mouth, then glanced at Bobby, and then just finally blew out a huff of air. "We go in together."

Dean pulled a face. "There isn't enough for both of us."

Sam glanced at Bobby for confirmation, and the hunter rolled his shoulder. "There's enough, but it won't last long."

The older of the two was already opening his mouth to argue. Again, how weird was it that Dean was defending letting his kid brother go off without him? Who was this guy, and what had happened to his ridiculously over protective, distrustful brother? The ping-pong game of personality switching was dizzying at best. Not to mention deeply worrying and confusing as hell.

Sam cut him off before he could get started. "It'll be enough."

The kettle started whistling, and he reached over to turn it off. He poured the water quickly and handed his big brother back the mug. "Wherever dad is, it's big. Cave, remember? We'll have more luck with two of us searching."

Now it was the older Winchester's turn to glance between the two with narrowed eyes. He had a feeling he just missed something and, deciding that it was most likely a chick moment, dropped it faster than a hot potato.

Instead, he turned to Bobby. "Think you can rustle up some more, if this isn't enough?"

The old hunter looked particularly imposed upon by the question. "What, you think Dream Root grows on trees?"

Dean opened his mouth to answer, but Sam was definitely shaking his head and making a subtle kill motion with his hand. Right, rhetorical. 'Root' was in the title.

Instead, he started through a mental list of people nearby that might have a stash lying around, or access to one.

"What about Garth?" he asked, checking off hunters in his head that were less than a day away. Dream Root wasn't an easy thing to find, he remembered. The Men of Letters had a supply, but that wasn't going to help them here. And he knew Bela was still alive in 2006 and could get her hands on almost anything they needed, but fuck that option. She'd stolen the Colt the last time they'd reached out to her for that particular ingredient.

Changes or not, he was _not_ tempting Time and/or Fate by introducing her and the gun into the exact same scenario twice.

Garth could have some or know a hunter with some, and he was only a couple hours away from Sioux Falls.

"What is it?" Sam's worried voice brought Dean back from his thoughts and clued him in that something was wrong. Bobby was looking between the two of them, eyes wide.

"You boys haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"Garth's dead."

Sam's face fell even as Dean's body went rigid.

"That's not possible."

Bobby shrugged helplessly at Dean's adamant refusal, shoulders weighted with grief. "I got the call yesterday. Something attacked him in his own home; his mom found him."

The three held a silent moment in respect and grief and shock. Well, two hunters held the silence. Dean was shaking his head, mind spinning. That wasn't possible. Garth was still alive in 2016; sure he was a werewolf but he was an _alive_ werewolf. Dean hadn't changed anything that would affect anyone else! And especially not Garth. Kid hadn't even been a part of the apocalypse.

"It's. Not. Possible," he repeated firmly, fist clenching by his side as he dared Bobby to challenge it. Because he knew it wasn't possible. Nothing had happened to bring the young hunter into the fold earlier this time around. He probably just tripped and shot himself in the foot, ended up unconscious in a ditch, and would turn up in three days with everyone thinking he'd gotten himself killed. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Look, he was a good kid. Nobody saying he wasn't," Bobby took off his cap in respect and ran a hand through his hair again. "But as far as hunters went…"

He shrugged and no one in the room could deny that they had all suspected Garth would get himself killed on a hunt somewhere down the line.

Only he _hadn't_.

Nothing had changed.

Except….

Cold flooded Dean like a bucket of ice water in the middle of the Arctic. In a flurry of movement that had both brother and father figure staring at him worriedly, he dug into his back pocket and pull out wrinkled, worn sheets of paper along with his cell. Even as he started scrolling through contacts, he flipped through the pages in his hands.

Sam couldn't read whatever it was written on them, but the stains and worn corners suggested his brother had been holding onto them for a while now. Dean stopped on one page, eyes roving over the scribbles again and again.

"Fuck!" He shoved the notes back into his pocket and devoted almost frenzied attention to his phone.

"Dean, what's going on?"

"Meg." That was the only answer Dean gave as he pressed a button on his phone and pressed it up to his ear, tapping his knuckles in a rapid beat on the back of the kitchen chair. Sam's eyes widened at the name, and Bobby looked at him for explanation. He hadn't gotten further than 'demon' when a click signaled someone had answered down the line.

"Caleb, listen to me-"

 _"Dean Winchester."_

Dean froze, body going rigid as he slowly straightened. He turned sharply to Sam and Bobby. Green eyes darted over his brother's face even as his expression fell into something dark. Something _bloody_. Dean didn't recognize the female voice filtering through the phone, but he knew the tone. He could hear the smirk.

"Meg. You son of a bitch."

 _"You started a war, Dean. And war has casualties."_ He heard Caleb protest bravely down the line, silenced quickly with a pained grunt. Dean's eyes slid closed against the knowledge of what came next: what he had no way of stopping. _"I want to know who you're getting your information from."_

Dean didn't answer, but the phone shook dangerously in his hand and he knew he was close to breaking it. He didn't know what to say that to save Caleb's life. Because he already knew nothing would. Damn it, he had known Meg would go after their friends for the Colt. He'd written the damn thing down so he wouldn't forget. Why hadn't he called Pastor Jim and Caleb the second he'd gotten that damn gun?

Not that it would have saved Garth.

Because Meg had targeted _John's_ friends last time. But John wasn't the one with the Colt right now.

 _"Fine._ "

He stiffened and yelled down the line, "No, don't!"

Caleb shouted out, but the sound was quickly swallowed in gurgling and Dean ran a hand viciously over his scalp, tugging at the roots of his hair as he listened to his friend die again. His eyes darted frantically around Bobby's kitchen and took in nothing. His jaw ached from how tightly he clenched his teeth and the device pressed to his ear gave an ominous crack as the plastic along the side finally gave.

"I am going to _kill_ you, you hear me!" he spat into the phone, but Meg only laughed. There was a soft thud down the line as Caleb's body hit the floor.

 _"Come and get me, Dean. In the meantime, I'm going to gut each and every one of your friends. Anyone you've ever cared about, anyone you've ever saved. You'll get to listen to them choke on their own blood, unless you tell me who is helping you and give me the damn Colt!"_

Dean met his brother's eyes, searching through the pain and grief. He and Bobby stood, looking equally lost and angry, but with nothing to channel that into. "Alright."

 _"What was that?"_

"I said alright," he growled dangerously. He ran another hand through his hair again, mind racing. "But I need a day."

Her high-pitched laugh grated on the next-to-nothing that was left of his nerves. _"Do you think I'm stupid?"_

"I'm nowhere near Caleb's, okay? I need time."

There was silence on the other end and Dean did his best to wait it out.

 _"I'll tell you what. I'll meet you at Bobby Singer's house._ " Dean glanced at the older hunter, who looked as on edge as Sam and ready for instruction. But there was nothing any of them could do in this situation. _"If you get to him before me, the old man lives. But no more games, Dean. If you're not there, with the Colt…well. I don't think I have to tell you what happens."_

He could still hear the echoes of Caleb choking on his own blood. Yeah, he got the gist.

 _"See you soon."_

The hunter snapped the phone shut and it broke straight in two. With a furious howl he launched it across the room, shattering what was left of it against the wall to the study. Both Sam and Bobby were on him in a second, but he shook his head. They didn't have time for a chat.

"If we're saving Dad, we have to do it right now." He turned to Bobby. "Is the house still demon-proofed?"

Sam snapped his mouth closed in surprise at the shut down and change of topic. Bobby was answering before he had a chance to demand what the hell had just happened.

"Sure," the older hunter gave a thoughtful nod. "Could probably boost it up a bit, if we got the time."

"Don't." Dean grabbed the forgotten mug of Dream Root off the table. "Meg's on her way here, and I need you to take the warding down."

"What?" Bobby barked at the same time Sam demanded, "Dean?"

The younger Winchester took half a step forward, anger filling every line of his body but for his eyes, which held the loss of two friends. "She killed Caleb and Garth, and we're going to….what? Just let her in?"

"We," Dean gestured to his brother and then himself, "are going to save Dad. Bobby is going to set a trap for Meg."

-o-o-o-

The two brothers carried chairs from the kitchen and a mug of disgusting smelling yellow tea down to the basement and into the panic room. Caleb lived in Lincoln, Nebraska: a solid three hours away from Bobby's even if Meg broke all speed limits and killed any cop who pulled her over.

So they had three hours to get into John's head and pull him back out before they had to deal with her.

Bobby had been pretty clear about his opinion of this plan, but it wasn't like they had a long list of options. John couldn't last forever against the Baku. Eventually, he would tell the thing where he was, and then they'd have a real problem on their hands.

In the meantime, there was always the risk the damn creature was feeding on him. Lucky for John, he was a hunter, which meant an endless damn feast of nightmares to choose from. The sparse good stuff – his hopes and dreams and happy memories – should be safe for at least a while.

Bobby stood in the door to the panic room, watching the two brothers with no small amount of grump, and certainly a fair bit of concern. "Get in and get out quick, you hear?"

Sam nodded to their surrogate father even as the two settled in the chairs and prepared to rescue their biological one. He knocked back half the tea, gagging at the foul taste and handing it over to Dean to equally suffer through.

"Get the house ready," Dean said even as he finished off the dregs of the tea with a grimace. "We'll be back in time."

"Right." Bobby sounded less convinced, but they were out of time to argue as the two succumbed to the sleep drug. He stared at his three house guests drooling in his panic room, before he turned and headed back upstairs to prep for a damn demon waltzing into his house.

He was getting too old for this crap.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-CHRONOLOGICAL ERROR:** 09/16/2017 Reviews pointed out that the boys did not know Garth pre-apocalypse. This is a chronological misstep on my part that, with reader input, I've decided to leave in the story. Garth's getting an awesome/geek-tastic cameo I think you'll all love later on in the story as an apology for my sloppy research! Thanks to everyone who pointed it out, and all readers who gave feedback on whether or not I should change this chapter._


	20. Season 1: Chapter 19

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings**_ _: You guys ready? You better be. So very many things are about to happen! Prepare for swearing, some pretty angsty callbacks, and grenade launchers. (yep, you read that right)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Chapter 19

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean woke to darkness.

Eternal, endless, empty.

 _Well duh, dumbass. Open your eyes._

He did, blinking several times before he realized that it was the same. Infinite black surrounded him, and it stretched on and on without change. There was solid ground beneath him. He tapped his fingertips against it as he stared up into nothingness. Smooth and hard, with no imperfections; an unnatural surface unlike anything he'd encountered before.

Surprisingly, his muscles didn't ache as he sat upwards and his bones didn't complain about the harsh solidity beneath him. Still, he could see nothing in the world but himself.

Dean wasn't much for the sciences, but he was pretty sure you needed light to see yourself. But there wasn't any, and there was his hand in front of his face, clear as day, sharply defined against a world of black. Look at that, there were even shadows stretched across the skin of his fingers. But if there was a source, he couldn't see it and it didn't touch anything else in this world.

Or there was nothing else to touch.

 _So this is it_. He climbed to his feet and the shuffle of cloth and muted scuff of boots echoed around him. _Amara won and this is life with the Darkness_.

Dean was numbly alright with that. Which he shouldn't be, given he'd spent the last six months fighting with everything he was to change everything that would come.

 _Six months_. The hunter looked around again, the first inklings of confusion and clarity warring with each other to fight through the numbness this blank world wrapped him in. _I was in 2006 for six months._

Had it been a dream? Had all of it been a pleasant illusion crafted by Amara to keep him comfortable? It sounded like something she would do. He knew that joining her, dying, wouldn't hurt. That she would make it as painless as possible.

Only, it hadn't been painless, nor entirely pleasant. The last six months of struggling alone against Time and a plan written in stone had been, in a hell of a lot of ways, more painful than the first friggin' time around.

It was also a needlessly complicated illusion for Amara, who could have given him the bunker and Sam and Cas and he'd never have bothered waking up.

Alright, maybe Chuck then. 'Needlessly Complicated' was a friggin' tagline for his story-making paradigm.

If this wasn't some illusion suddenly cut short, he was out of ideas. It definitely wasn't heaven. He'd seen enough of that place to know. Same with Purgatory and Hell, loathe as he was to know those places equally well. So if he wasn't in the three big ones, this wasn't Amara, and God was probably involved…

Where the hell was he?

"Dean!"

The hunter spun at the new sound as it echoed around him. But there was no one. He couldn't tell if the blackness around him stretched ten feet or ten thousand.

"Dean, can you hear me?"

He turned more slowly this time. That was Sammy's voice calling out. If he was stuck in here too, maybe he'd have some answers. He was the smart one after all. "Sam?"

"Dean!"

The hunter turned and his brother was suddenly in front of him, despite having definitely not been there a second before. He stumbled back out of surprise, putting a couple feet between him and his kid brother. Jeez, what was this, a friggin' Fun House from Hell?

"What the hell, man?"

Sam was staring at him funny, brown eyes blown wide before they squinted together under a furled brow. His gaze dragged down slowly, then back up. Dean stared at him expectantly, but when his brother didn't answer he gave him an irritated look.

"Dude, my eyes are up here."

Sam immediately scoffed, rolling his eyes. Though he partially turned away, his gaze kept darting back to his brother, like he couldn't help it. Dean watched him through narrowed eyes, getting more than a little testy.

"What, I got something on my face?"

Sam dared hold his gaze a little longer before he finally turned away from his brother to survey the landscape, or lack thereof, surrounding them. "Let's just find dad."

Dean blinked. "Dad?"

The hesitancy in Sam's movements and the slight surprise on his face as he turned back to Dean triggered something in the older hunter. Dad. Dad was alive.

Dad was alive and….with the Darkness?

"We took the Dream Root, remember?" Sam was staring at him full-on again, but the intrigue was replaced with confused worry as his brother seemed to have forgotten what they were doing here. Or where here was at all. "We're in Dad's head; we need to find him."

The man from the future blinked and it all slid back into place. This was a dream. The last six months hadn't been a dream. But _this_ was a dream.

He looked around at the emptiness and balked. "What the hell. This is nothing like the first time."

Sam blinked at him. "First time?"

"That we took Dream Root."

The worry and something else – something vaguely like Bitchface #12 – filtered across his brother's features. He was still staring.

"This is the first time, Dean."

The man from the future stood there, staring at his brother. "What?"

"I've never taken Dream Root before this." The younger Winchester watched him as his concern morphed into something tighter – more controlled. "When did you?"

The hunter slammed his mouth shut so hard there was an audible clack. What the hell. He looked away from his brother as he realized what he'd said, and that suddenly he was having a much harder time clamping down the thoughts filtering through his mind. Specifically the last time they'd taken the root and swam around Bobby's head. Something that hadn't happened yet, and wouldn't for another several years.

It was like he had no ability to stop thinking about it. Worse, he wanted to blurt all of it out. With a hand slapped over his mouth, he immediately slammed a wall around everything labeled 'future' in his mind.

Sam was still staring at him when he turned back. Yeah, maybe not his most subtle slip up, but crap all if he was gonna have another chat about this while inside John Winchester's head.

"Let's go find Dad. We're on a time limit, right?"

"And he's back," Sam muttered under his breath, but it echoed in the cavernous emptiness around them. Dean gave him a funny look, but the younger Winchester just gestured ahead with his hand, and the two started through the emptiness in search of their father.

-o-o-o-

They'd only been walking for about five minutes when Dean really started looking around. After having made it through Bobby's nightmare of a head the first time they took Dream Root, he'd expected something pretty different than what they were seeing. The old house, old hunts, Mom maybe. Nightmares, or even dreams. But not….nothing.

"What the hell," he finally groused, throwing his arms out. "Why is dad's head…empty?"

Sam cast a cursory glance at their surroundings, but seemed less bothered by them. "He's hiding. Look around: no clues, no visuals. Nothing to show where he was before he went to sleep."

Dean glanced around again before giving his brother a glance. Sam shrugged. "He knew he was being hunted, that something was looking for him."

The older hunter let out a whistle. "Damn. Talk about control. Gotta hand it to the man."

His brother huffed a laugh. "Yeah, but how are we going to find him?"

Dean narrowed his eyes, spinning in a slow circle again. "Well, he's gotta be in here somewhere, right?" He surveyed the darkness around them, trying to think like John.

Beside him, Sam shrugged. "It's his head, so I'd assume so."

His older brother paused, almost tripping over his own feet as he looked at Sam. "It's his head," he repeated. Sam nodded, though he wasn't sure what revelation his brother had stumbled over. "This is _John Winchester's_ head."

Again, his brother nodded, but had no clue where Dean was going with it.

"Dad's a hunter," he emphasized. "Sammy, he's hunting this thing as sure as it's hunting him."

Sam's eyes grew wider with understanding and he glanced around again. Right, like their Dad would take _hiding_ laying down.

"Okay…but how does that help us find him?" The taller man straightened as it clicked and he fell in sync with his brother's plan. He sucked in a breath as he answered his own question, "We don't. We get the Baku to come to us."

"And Dad will follow." Dean was grinning. "Now….how do we get Chinese Frankenstein to play ball?"

Sam opened his mouth to fix his brother's grossly incorrect analogy, but dropped the subject when the answer to his question popped into his mind instead. "We populate the dream."

Green eyes looked to him beneath raised eyebrows. "What?"

"Bakus feed on dreams and nightmares. We need to give him something to eat." Sam closed his eyes, thinking hard. Even as Dean opened his mouth to ask how the hell they were supposed to do that, a soft voice broke the echoing darkness.

"Sam." The call, light with a smile and endless love, turned both brother's attention to the woman standing just behind them. She had a smurf's sleep shirt on and a pair of boxers she'd stolen from Sam one night and never given back. A small smile spread across flawless skin, dotted with freckles and marks Sam had spent more than a few nights memorizing as she slept beside him.

"Jess," he breathed out. Warmth filled his incorporeal body and the world around them suddenly exploded in color. Light pushed away the darkness in swirls of blue and white, wrapping around Jess and stretching away from the boys for a dozen feet or so. Dean traced the explosion of light and color to its edges, where it danced almost playfully with the jagged edges of the darkness that took on a smoke like appearance now that it had something to contrast against.

Damn, is this what being in his brother's head was like?

He looked back at Jess as the two college kids stood there smiling at each other like the dorks they both were. Dean finally cleared his throat, starting to feel awkward. Sam startled, looking over to him.

"Dude," he admonished, shooing him with his hand, "start bringing stuff in."

The older hunter stared at his brother like he was slightly crazy. As if he spent his evenings practicing dream summoning. Right.

Sam rolled his eyes. "What do you usually dream about?"

The question was one Dean _knew_ he shouldn't contemplate the answer to. As immediately as Sam asked it, Dean tried to slam a mental hand down on the response his mind readily jumped to. But like telling someone not to think of pink elephants, there was no way he could catch his thoughts before they formed.

And it wasn't pink elephants that danced across the surface of his mind.

"Hey." The voice was soft and painfully, heart-achingly familiar. "You gonna sit down?"

Dean turned around to face Lisa Braeden, sitting on a picnic blanket spread over the colorless ground. She smiled up at him, a wine glass in hand, like she had years ago – years from now – in Bobby's head.

"Hi." He all but stumbled over the word even as his chest swelled. Green splashed out from the blanket, splattering the black like freshly spilled paint. It didn't completely banish the darkness like Sam and Jess had, instead the colors mixed and morphed until there were bright patches of green as fresh as grass and others deep and dark, writhing with pain and envy.

Dean didn't let it bother him. He knew this dream was as sad as it was happy.

"Dean!" A weight crashed into his legs and side, and he automatically brought his hand down to rest on Ben's head, wrapping the kid in a hug with his other arm. The boy was grinning up at him with the 100-watt Winchester grin, even if they both knew it wasn't his name. "You came back!"

"Yeah, kiddo," he croaked out, clearing his throat against the tightness there. His whole body thrummed with energy, but he valiantly ignored the swelling joy threatening to beat his heart right out of his chest.

When he looked down at the eleven year old boy wrapped around his waist, he nearly lost it. Fiery orange had spread out around them, pulsing with flickers of yellow that no darkness could possibly compete against and he knew, without a doubt, that this was his happiness.

A happiness he really couldn't watch a Baku devour. He had so little left, he was pretty sure it would be his undoing.

"Sorry, buddy," he whispered, squeezing Ben's shoulders in a half hug against his own body. "I love you, kiddo, but you're not real."

He closed his eyes against the flash of confusion and hurt in the kid's eyes, even as the weight against him disappeared like sand drifting on the wind. Lisa and the colors were gone when he opened his eyes. It was just Sam and Jess, standing in a sunburst of blues and whites. His brother was watching him, and though he clearly didn't know who the two people he just saw were, there was an understanding in his eyes that Dean wouldn't have expected from a Sam ten years younger than he knew.

Clearing his throat, Dean focused on _not Lisa_ and _not Ben_ , and instead watched as the dream populated with various people they'd saved on hunts, monsters they'd taken to the grave, even Bobby showed up, busy arguing with Rufus. The sight sparked a flare of warmth and amusement in him, but he absolutely refused to acknowledge the bursts of magenta and deep purple that pulsed beneath the older hunter and swirled outward. Too damn girly. He absolutely did not think _pink_ when he thought about Bobby Singer.

He was gonna be lucky if he could look the man in the eye when they woke back up. Fucking dream walking, man.

The colors that spread from beneath the others he summoned were dimmed, dull and flickering like they weren't really sure they could take on the darkness they fought against. But Dean didn't feel like he'd be crushed and never recover if the Baku managed to gobble up a couple blotchy memories riddled with as much pain as goodness.

"Alright, that's outta be enough," he muttered and looked back to his brother, who was doing something similar. None of his brother's projections blasted radiant light and color quite like Jess did, and Dean was honestly happy he'd picked up on that.

He was pretty sure his brother didn't want to see friends or family feed a supernatural beasty any more than Dean wanted Lisa or Braeden served up for dessert.

"Do we just wait?" Sam's hand was in Jess's, but Dean got the feeling she would be gone before the action came down on their heads. Until then, he could practically see the warmth and purpose filling his brother and realized just how badly Sam had needed this, needed to see her, to be with her.

He wondered if the kid dreamt of Jess often. Or if he dreaded it, for the very reason that he'd once dreamt her death and it had almost come true. He wondered if Sam closed his eyes every night and prayed not to have visions of the woman he loved.

Something moved along the edges of the darkness, and both brothers tensed. Sam pushed Jess behind him protectively. The hunters scanned the edges of their projections, where the colors curled against the darkness that pushed and pulsed. They couldn't see the beast, as the Baku kept just enough in the edges of the blackness to remain concealed.

Sam thought he saw a flash of tusk and an amber eye as the thing circled them.

"Well, guess it worked," Dean muttered, right before his dream people closest to the edges of the darkness suddenly blurred. Parts of their incorporeal forms whisked away, like smoke drawn into a vacuum.

Dean let out a gasp, staggering a step forward. Although the dream projections were far away, the hunter felt the tug of their disappearance, the pull of the Baku as it fed on his memories. It pulled at his body and made his chest feel oddly tight. Heavy.

A bright, red light suddenly filled the space like a flare in the darkness of an ocean.

Thunder cracked across the space and Dean started, eyes shooting up to the firework bursting in a shower of red sparkles between them and the Baku. The projections of his dreams suddenly stilled, turning their gazes as one towards the burst of light, and a couple even oohed and awed at the show.

There was a hiss from the darkness and the tugging in his body released its hold as the Baku retreated from the bright light and thunderous explosion that followed. The edges of his projects settled back in place, dimmer than before but still present.

Sam grabbed at his shoulder to help study him, and Dean gave him the standard ' _I'm okay'_ hunter's nod.

"Good news: firework theory was true," Sam huffed out, eyes straining on the darkness around them.

"Yay for us," Dean breathed out, straightening. He felt infinitely better now that parts of his mind weren't being forcefully torn from him. The Baku was still out there, pacing. They could hear the soft pad of his paws and the drag of his tail across the emptiness. This time, it would approach more carefully. "Hope you got some more of those ready."

Beside him, Sam stood grim but determined. They just had to hold out long enough for John to find them. Luckily, ammo came for free in dreamland.

"Alright," Dean kept turning a slow circle, eyes training for the next attack. "We got him here. What was step two?"

Sam huffed a laugh, fists clenching and wishing he was armed.

A weight fell into his hand, so suddenly that he would have dropped it if not for the comforting feel of the machete handle. Surprised, he lifted the long blade to his face, observing the razor edge and glint of unnatural light along steel.

"Huh." Sam raised his eyes at his brother, who shrugged and closed his eyes in an attempt to summon a weapon of his own.

Sam caught the flash of movement seconds before the Baku leapt from the darkness. "Dean, move!"

He dove for his brother, bodily tackling him across the side and taking both of them to the ground hard. The air drove from his lungs and he heard Dean groan beneath him. The younger hunter didn't waste any time, rolling over to the side and scrambling to his knees.

A gasp tore from his throat as something _else_ , something not of the world he was used to, pulled at every inch of his body. He caught himself on his hands as pieces were tugged forcefully away from his very being. Through bleary eyes, he saw the Baku, sucking at the ground several dozen feet away. The colors were melting together like paint, bleeding away to leave darkness once more as they were consumed in the greedy vacuum the beast presented.

Gunfire ripped through the air, the bullet cracking in its release.

The Baku let out a high pitch yelp, turning and baring its teeth in a roar, trunk flailing. The feline body crouched defensively before bounding into the darkness once more.

Dean, sitting upright on the swirled floor, glared at the thing from the sight-line of his ivory-inlaid .45 caliber handgun gripped tightly in a rock-steady hand. So he wasn't a natural at manifesting shit in dreamland, but he pulled through when it counted.

"You okay, Sammy?"

Sam rubbed at his arms, relieved at the solidity of his body beneath his palms. The pull of the Baku's influence had made him feel as incorporeal as smoke, and for a moment he'd irrationally feared he would wisp away into nothingness.

"Yeah, I'm good. About that step two?"

The two hunters climbed to their feet. Dean glanced around them. Half the colors had disappeared, and what was left of their projections congregated around them almost nervously. They moved restlessly, and many of them were so dim they were hardly there at all.

Okay, so baiting the thing had worked. Now how the hell did they kill something that couldn't be killed before it ate them?

"Erm…." Dean glanced at the feeding fest they had offered up around them. Right, time for plan B. "Run."

They took off in a random direction, leaving their projections behind to fade out without their presence to sustain them.

When the wall slammed into existence right in front of them, Dean managed not to crash face first into it with the graceful flair of flying limbs and skidding feet. Beside him, Sam caught himself on the smooth tiles, slamming his full weight into the catch, but managing not to break his face on the very solid wall.

"What the hell?" The taller of the two glanced up the black and white wall only to find a stone ceiling above them. He spun around at the fully enclosed room they suddenly found themselves in. Tile walls and stone pillars surrounded them. A metal staircase led to a second story lined with iron-work railings.

Old machinery, looking like something out of a bad sci-fi film from the fifties lined the walls. Panels dotted with blinking lights and various meters filled half the available wall space, and Sam could see more equipment in the neighboring room. There was a table in the center of this room, lit from beneath the surface and lined with chairs. A couple notepads and books laid open on the surface, which looked like a world map.

"Is the Baku doing this?" he asked as he moved to the table cautiously. The rest of the room opened up into another, that one raised several steps higher and hosting shelves of books and wooden study tables, like a library. There were other hallways branching off of either room, and Sam was both relieved at the number of possible exists and concerned about the numerous entry points for the beast to attack them from. "I don't recognize this place."

"I do." Dean was staring at the achingly familiar details of the bunker and ignoring the homesickness that curled in his chest. Fucking dreamland. "The baku didn't do this. I think I did."

He'd wanted shelter and someplace safe to regroup. Guess he'd gotten a version of it, at least.

The younger of the two stared questioningly, but Dean shook his head. Instead, he moved for the hallway just off the stairwell that Sam had avoided due to it being tucked away in a far darker part of the room and perfect for an ambush from the Baku. "Come on, this place is a labyrinth. And it's well armed."

Sam followed after into a long hallway with square-arched intersections and high-tiled walls. All of the doors along the hallway they entered were closed and the couple that he tried were solidly locked. Nice, heavy wood structures all labeled with a number and a different set of symbols inlaid within a circle of gold. "What is this place?"

"It's a bunker," Dean answered tightly and Sam's head snapped forward to stare at his brother's back.

 _Like the bunker you didn't mean to talk about on the Wendigo hunt?_

"It was built to ward off supernatural baddies. And it's got a shit-ton of information and supplies."

They hit the end of the corridor and made a left down a secondary hallway that looked exactly like the first. If it weren't for the different numbers on the doors, Sam would have guessed they'd just made an Escher-like loop, which seemed more than possible in dreamland. But the new hall led to a staircase that descended deeper into the bunker. Dean took it without hesitation and they were deposited into another identical hallway. Just how big was this place?

"Where is it?" Sam asked cautiously. Other than 'likely underground' due to a lack of windows, there weren't a lot of clues. North America if the map upstairs was any indication. Most likely the States, since his brother didn't own a passport. The architecture wasn't telling, other than it was old and probably built in the fifties, as the machines upstairs suggested.

He could tell this was an off limit topic, but it wasn't like Dean could pretend he wasn't seeing what he was seeing. It might be wrong to abuse the fact it was easier to pull information from his cagey brother in dreamland, but at this point he no longer cared.

They wasn't going to be much of their brotherhood left if Dean kept up the secrets.

"It's gone." Dean's voice was tight, and Sam wondered what had happened that had bound his nomadic brother so tightly to a place. He could hear the ache in his voice and the anger behind those clenched teeth.

He really hadn't thought so much could happen in four years. In fact, he was starting to suspect it had been a lot longer for one of them.

Dean pushed open one of the many doors they were passing, all similar enough outside of their number that Sam had long ago gotten lost. The younger hunter pulled up short at the sight of a full blown armory within.

"Is that a _shooting range_?"

His brother laughed, beckoning Sam into the room with a sweeping arc of his arm. "Welcome to the bat cave, Sammy."

The lights above them suddenly flickered, the high pitch buzzing of electricity filling the air. A gasp broke the good mood, and Dean pressed a hand to his chest as he staggered against the open door.

"Dean?" Sam went to steady to him, even as his brother regained his balance.

"It's here."

Sam glanced into the armory at the assortment of weapons, some he hadn't even seen before. He gave a stoic nod. "Then let's figure out how to kill the damn thing."

An idea lit up his mind like a lightbulb and his eyes flashed at the memory of those walls lined with books. Dean was already moving into the room to gather up several blades and a gun that was nothing short of an elephant rifle.

"Dean, you said this place had information. Does it have books on supernatural creatures?"

His brother looked at him like he was crazy for a moment, before he caught on. It was almost comical to watch his face morph from confusion, to understanding, to optimism, and finally settling on the misery as the realization of what his brother's question entailed finally hit.

"We're being hunted by a dream eater in dad's head, and you want to _read a book_?"

Sam shrugged, a smile tugging at his lips despite the rather dire situation and the ticking countdown on this little mission of theirs. "We don't know how to kill it, and we've got to do that before we can rescue dad. So…"

"Ugh, fine!" Dean put the grenade launcher back on its designated shelf with more than a little disappointment (and Sam did a double take at the friggin _grenade launcher_ )Instead, he grabbed two blades and a gun, tossing them to his brother who caught them expertly and tucked them into his waistline and boot top. "But you're doing the reading. I'm the lookout."

The younger hunter laughed as they headed back up the staircase and long hallway of rooms. Dean stumbled several times, each in tune with the flicker of lights. The last one accompanied a tremor that ran along the walls and shook dust from the ceiling.

"Do you really think it's a good idea to give him so much to feed on?" Sam whispered as they made it back into the first room, with the black and white tiles and iron-laid staircase.

"At least it's not chewing on us," Dean grumbled back, though he knew it wasn't completely true. Luckily, he had plenty of nightmares to throw at the thing to keep it busy.

As if on cue, the sconces around them flickered and then shut off completely. Dean lost his balance at a particularly harsh tug and caught himself on the wall. Emergency red light filled the bunker, painting it with the sickening color of danger and bad news. Unpleasant memories always came with that light.

"Dean?" Sam scanned the room around them for danger as he stood protectively in front of his unsteady brother. He drew up short when he spotted something new in the adjoining room. A body, unmoving on the floor that hadn't been there before. "Dean!"

Leaving his older brother, he took off up the stairs and slid to a halt at the still form sprawled on the ground beside the long wooden table. Male. Young. Dressed in jeans, a white shirt and tan button up. No obvious wounds or blood. Fingers searched for a pulse before he turned the cold, lifeless body over.

He was just a kid, a couple years younger than Sam. Dark hair, Asian descent, and his eyes….

Sam bit back the bile that threatened to choke him, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as he stared at the blown out holes that had once been the kid's eyes.

"Kevin…" Sam turned to his brother, standing at the top of the steps as he stared at the body with the eyes of someone who was seeing a ghost. A ghost whose death had been his fault, if the guilt eating at his expression was anything to go by.

"Dean?" Sam stood, taking a step back from the corpse and towards his clearly shaken brother. "It's the Baku. He's fueling your nightmare, giving himself more to eat. Fight it, Dean."

There was a crash in the room to their left and Sam drew his gun, eye trained on any movement. The sound of books hitting the ground in a clatter broke the tense silence a second time. The smell of gasoline was suddenly overwhelming in the windowless room and Sam gagged, pulling up his shirt to cover his nose even as he kept his weapon trained on the next room. He could hear desperate, gasping breaths coming from the room. Someone was injured, pretty gravely going by the wet gurgle of each breath.

He took a step towards the entrance, side stepping Kevin's body. Dean's wrist closed tightly around his, and Sam turned to him in surprise. He hadn't heard him move. In the red light, his brother's skin looked pale and sallow.

"Don't."

The younger of the two glanced at the room again, at the sound of those slow, wet breaths. He wondered if it was his brother lying in that room, struggling through what was probably a collapsed lung and gasoline fumes.

"Dean, we need those books." He twisted his wrist within his brother's grip so he could clamp his own hand around Dean's forearm. "Fight it."

The hunter took a shaky breath under his brother's challenging gaze, but ended up nodding hastily and closing his eyes. His face evened out in concentration, and the red lights suddenly shut off, switching almost seamlessly back to yellow-white. When he opened his eyes, Kevin's body was gone, and so was the smell of gasoline.

"Okay." Sam released his arm and started for the library. "Let's gank this thing."

Dean still tensed as he entered the room behind his brother. But the books were all tucked away in their proper shelves. The Stynes didn't litter the floor. And a beaten, broken Cas was nowhere to be seen.

He let out a shaky breath. Time to pull it together; they had a job to do.

Sam was pulling out books in rapid succession, scanning along the tombs. Dean left him to it. Even with more familiarity of the bunker than Sam, the kid could be blind and still better at research than he would ever be. Instead, Dean took up his post as watchdog, rifle raised and patrolling the three entrances that led to the library.

Movement to his left caught his eye and he trained in on the small doorway that led back to the dorms. He lifted the gun, trained on the dark corners of the hallway just past the stonework. Sam glanced up from the books, but ducked his head back down and doubled his scanning speed in case they were out of time.

Dean stepped slowly towards the hall, moving around the furniture and pillars with the ease of someone achingly familiar with his surroundings. He hadn't meant to summon the bunker around them, but he wasn't unhappy to see it. This was home turf, and he knew every nook and cranny of the incredibly well-armed labyrinth. No dream walker was taking him down in his own sanctuary.

The hunter whipped around the corner, gun raised only to find an empty hallway.

The click of a hammer cocking and the cold metal of a muzzle pressing to the base of his skull drew him up short. His fingers tightened around the trigger of his own gun, but the person behind him pressed harder into the back of his neck.

Since when did Baku carry guns, or was this another nightmare projection?

"Drop it."

He probably shouldn't have turned around. He probably should have done what the person demanded. In fact, he was lucky he didn't get a bullet in the face for such a stupid move. But he couldn't help it, surprise at the very familiar voice caused his body to turn before thought or survival instinct could stop him.

"Dad?"


	21. Season 1: Chapter 20

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _- **A/Ns** : Thank you to everyone who read last chapter, and special thanks to everyone who dropped a line. Sooo many people fan-freaked out with me about the dream stuff :) It was awesome, and I loved reading everything you had to say. _

_**-Chapter Warnings:** Dream Act II! Let's see, who didn't we sneak in last time? Oh yeah, how about a little Mary and Castiel? Not to mention more Baku action, John trying to kill his sons, and whatever else kinda fuckery we can throw at our poor boys._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 20

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean stared at the face of his father down the barrel of a Colt M1911A1. John looked the same as the last time he had seen him alive, leaning over him in the hospital bed in Sioux Falls. Greying. Maybe a little tired around the eyes. But very much alive, full of vitality and near-righteous anger.

"I said drop it."

"Dad, it's me." Dean didn't drop the rifle, but he did hold it clearly out to the side. It was no longer a threat to John, but he wasn't letting it go when the Baku could be nearby.

"Yeah, it always is." His father's finger tightened on the trigger and Dean had time to wonder what a bullet through the brain in dreamland would do to his real self before the gun fired with an explosive crack that damn near blew out his ear drums.

The bullet slammed into the stonework over his shoulder as Sam slammed into his father with the entire weight of his body and the velocity of a full-tilt run. The two went down hard. Dean dropped the rifle to draw his handgun as his family grappled on the floor. John had intended to kill him – or what he likely thought was the demon's illusion of him. Which meant he would be just as willing to kill Sam.

While Sammy was a hell of a hunter and more than proficient at hand-to-hand combat, no one got the upper hand on John Winchester easily.

John pinned Sam to the floor, straddling his chest. He had relinquished the gun during the scuffle in exchange for his Muela Bowie knife, which he pressed against Sam's throat in a backhanded grip. The kid grasped at his father's wrist, using his forearm to leverage the blade as far from his skin as he could in a losing fight.

Dean didn't hesitate to press his gun to the back of his father's head.

"Drop it." He said in a parody of John's own command.

The hunter tilted his head sharply to the side, eyeing his oldest boy and the weapon that stayed flush against his skull with his every movement. Good boy. He'd almost be proud if Dean wasn't just a construct of his mind.

Green eyes narrowed when the blade remained against his brother's neck. "You gonna kill your own son?"

The words were spat, hurtful and angry and bitter, in a way that made John's heart ache. They only further proved to him that this was a dream of the demon's cruel design. His Dean – the real Dean – couldn't know that these days his darkest thoughts, his worst nightmares, were about having to take the life of his youngest boy with his own hands.

"You're not my sons," he bit out as he kept his eyes on the Dean and his blade pressed to Sam's throat.

"Yes. We are."

"We- We took African Dream Root," Sammy gasped out, straining against his father's strength. "Bobby called us."

John glanced down at his youngest, the first inkling of possibility filtering in. This was the first time a dream construct had suggested where he was, rather than asked. But no. The demon was clever, and anything he could come up with could be used against him here, including spell components and an old friend.

"Good try, but I'm not falling for it."

He moved to swipe the blade across his son's throat when Dean's arm encircled his neck from behind, pulling back his head to expose his throat. The muzzle of his gun jammed under his jaw as his son caught him in a headlock.

"I will risk killing you before I risk you killing him," Dean snarled and John's eyes darted up into the murderous face of his oldest son.

"Dean!"

Confusion curled across the firing neurons in his brain. If this was a construct of his mind, it was off. It might look just like him, but that wasn't his Dean, that wasn't his good soldier and oldest son. So who – or what – was it?

"Prove it." He didn't lift the blade from Sam's throat, though he knew he no longer had the leverage at this angle to use it against his younger boy's strength. "If you're my son and we're in my head, prove it."

Dean growled low in his throat at the near impossible request. What kind of solution was that? Anything John already knew, a dream walker could just as easily answer. So Dean couldn't prove he was real that way. Anything he came up with that John didn't know would be written off as a lie if their stubborn-ass dad didn't like it as the truth.

How the hell was he supposed to come up with something John Winchester would believe, but didn't already know about?

An idea popped into his mind before he was done internally ranting about how unlikely he was to ever think up something useable and why did his dad have to be such a paranoid, heartless bastard who didn't even flinch at the prospect of taking out his own son, real or not.

Dean tossed the daddy issues to the side, tapping his finger against the side of the gun as he swallowed around the lump in his throat. Damn it. Threatening to kill his father had been easier than confessing something he knew would disappoint the man.

"That time you left me at the boy's home in upstate New York, after I got caught stealing food." Despite the lump in his throat and the telling burn behind his eyeballs, Dean didn't dare take his gaze off his father for a second, despite every emotional instinct to do so. The ex-marine would only need half of that to get the upper hand, and they were lucky he hadn't killed them the first chance he had. "I didn't want to leave. It was the best damn two months of my life. And when you came and got me-"

He choked past the emotion that clogged his throat at the memory. Of Sonny telling him he could stay, being the father he'd never really had, offering the life he hadn't thought he needed.

"I didn't want to go with you." Dean's hand tightened on the gun, his palm sweaty against the warm metal. John just stared at him, unblinking in the face of his oldest son. "I never told you because it wouldn't have mattered. You'd have hauled my ass out of there either way. So I left with you and Sammy."

On the floor, Sam stared past his father with wide eyes. He remembered Dean disappearing for a couple months back when they were kids. Lost on a hunt, they'd told him. He'd had no idea his older brother had spent the time safe in a home. Apparently, a home he'd liked better than his nomadic life.

If it wasn't so eye-opening and if the pain in his brother's eyes wasn't so real, he'd be giving Dean shit for harking on him all the times he'd ran away or expressed his disinterest in the life. He had always assumed Dean didn't understand – could never understand – and yet here he was. He understood perfectly, he was just able to tuck it all away like it hadn't happened and didn't matter.

The knife slowly pulled away from his throat as John, still staring at his eldest son, relaxed the his murderous stance. Dean kept the gun trained on him as the hunter climbed to his feet and stepped away from the youngest Winchester.

Sam rolled to the side and clambered to his feet to stand beside his brother. Only then did Dean lower his gun and release the hammer.

John stared at his boys and let himself believe it could be them, there in his head to stave off the demon. His boys, who he hadn't seen since Lawrence, and who he hadn't properly seen for almost a year now.

He reached forward, wrapped his arms around the both of them and tugged them to his side.

Dean stiffened under his touch – another oddity that kept John just ever so slightly on edge. But Sam wrapped an arm around him willingly, and soon enough Dean did as well.

"What are you boys doing here?" The soldier asked as he pulled away, father-mode tucked away and game face on.

Sam was blinking away watery eyes as their search for their dad finally came to an end. John didn't make mention of that, for which he was thankful. He really didn't want to start this reunion off with more of a fight than the standoff already had been. "You weren't waking up, so we had to come get you."

"It's not the demon, Dad," Dean added, looking uncomfortably caught between emotion and aloofness. Well, at least that was still true to the Dean he knew. "It's a Baku. Yellow Eyes is using it to track you."

John frowned, his naturally-inclined hunter's brain rapidly adapting the new information. As loathe as he was to admit he had been wrong, the boys' theory made more sense, and things that hadn't fit before fell into place. Like how persistent and all-encompassing the dreams had been.

"Shit," he finally groused. "Guess that explains why the panic room didn't work."

"We've got to figure out how to break its hold on you." Sam picked up Dean's abandoned rifle, handing it back to his brother. "We were looking for a way to do that when you showed up."

John followed his youngest as he moved over to a table full of books. He chanced a glance around. He hadn't cared much for his surroundings before other than to keep a constant eye out for danger. But he didn't recognize this place, and figured it must be one of his boys generating it. "What is this, anyway?"

"Uh…" Sam glanced at Dean, then back to their dad. "It's a library…of sorts."

John flipped open the cover of a book atop the nearest stack with a non-committal noise. Sam raised his eyebrows at Dean, who subtly shook his head with a grateful look.

"How long do you boys have before the root wears off?"

John closed the book and went back to scanning their surroundings. Beside him, Dean fell in step and re-checked the integrity of the rifle in his hands, given that he had dropped it rather hastily. A jam in their line of work could get you killed.

"It's hard to say." Sam sent another glance at his brother, who was being oddly quiet in the presence of their father. Dean usually chomped at the bit to offer information and suggestions to John. Anything to impress or please the man. "Time isn't easy to keep track of down here. Probably not much longer: an hour at most."

The walls started to tremble again, and all three hunters' heads shot up at the disturbance. Dean met his brother's gaze but shook his head. It wasn't the Baku; it wasn't feeding on him.

Tiles started to rattle on the walls and fall to the floor as the shaking worsened.

"Okay, times up." Dean cocked the rifle even as Sam slammed shut the book he was holding and grabbed two more. "Let's move!"

The three hunters took off across the trembling floor as the walls began to collapse in on themselves. The lights fell from the deteriorating ceiling, crashing to the ground and creating a dangerous game of Frogger for the three men.

"Where do we go?" Sam yelled even as Dean overtook their father for the lead. He headed back to the black and white tiled room with the table map, and booked it straight for the metal staircase leading to the second story.

Given that this was Dean's construct, Sam followed without question. Luckily, so did John.

Dean made it to the second floor, scrambling through a short hallway that quickly ended at a heavy metal door Sam hadn't seen from below. His older brother was pulling at a large lever and Sam slammed into the door, grabbing at the mechanism and heaving with his brother. Together, with a grunt, they managed to slide it up and over the locking mechanism.

Ceiling rained down around them. They were out of time. John grabbed both boys by the bicep and hurled himself and his sons through the door.

-o-o-o-

Sam landed hard and groaned at the multiple, painful points of pressure along his body from the uneven, pokey surface he had landed on.

"Get off me, you're friggin' heavy."

The youngest Winchester rolled with a groan, sliding off of his brother who struggled up with a gasp of air now that all two hundred and twenty pounds of moose brother wasn't compressing his rib cage and diaphragm.

"Don't be a baby," Sam groused, rolling to his knees and climbing to his feet from there. He offered Dean a hand, which is brother took with a mock glare.

"Where are we?" He muttered instead, dusting off his jeans and glancing around.

"Home."

The two boys turned to their father, who was standing a few feet away, looking as if he hadn't taken a dive with them moments before. The older hunter was staring at the quaint house around them. The white walls, tinted blue in the moonlight filtering through the kitchen just behind them. The wooden staircase near the front door, inlaid glass showing the quiet yard and no sign of damage from the ax Dean had taken to it a month ago.

"This is Jenny's house," Sam realized as he turned around, inspecting the surroundings. Jenny and her children were nowhere to be seen, nor was any evidence that they had lived in this rendition of their childhood home. The furniture and arrangement was unfamiliar to him. The child's drawing on the fridge and the pictures held by magnets were too far to identify, but Sam didn't recognize any of them as the pictures Sari had been drawing.

"No, Sammy." John was staring at him with a mix of emotions darting across his face. "This is our house."

"Uh…right. I know." Sam shrugged one shoulder. "The woman that lives there now is named Jenny. We were there a couple months ago. There was a poltergeist…."

He trailed off uncertainly, suddenly feeling both awkward and irritated at his own explanation. John would have known all this if he ever checked his messages or showed up when his sons needed him.

"We called you," he ended up adding defensively, and with no little amount of hurt in his voice.

"Shit," Dean swore, breaking up the possible fight before it could begin, as well as any sentimental reunion, however unlikely one was in this family. He patted down his jacket and waistline. "The weapons are gone."

Sam searched the floor for the books he'd grabbed on Asian lore and mythological beasts. Neither were in sight, and he knew he'd made it through the bunker door with them.

"Can you make more?" he found himself asking his brother, even though Dean already had his eyes closed in concentration, trying to do just that.

Green eyes opened, filled with annoyance. "Not working for me."

"Maybe because it's not your dream?" Sam turned to face John. The house they were in was clue enough as to whose construct this was and whose nightmare the Baku had pulled from.

Their dad looked between the two of them for a moment, before he gave a 'what the hell' shrug and closed his eyes. After a moment of nothing, he opened one, then followed with the other. No such luck.

"The Baku must have taken back control," Dean muttered, making the entire thing sound like one long curse.

"That can't be good."

The words weren't even out of Sam's mouth before light sprung into existence around them, orange and hot and flickering. Crackles broke the air and smoke hung heavy in the room that had been clear seconds ago. Dean swore as he stumbled back from the walls suddenly engulfed in hot, angry flames. Sam grabbed at his shoulder in an effort to pull him back and steady him all in one. Beside them, John's military-trained instincts kicked in and he sought the nearest exit among the fire.

The front door was blocked by the growing flames, as was the kitchen. That only left upstairs. Of course.

He grabbed his boys and hollered for them to make it to the second story. Sammy's old nursery was above the garage. They'd be able to climb onto the roof from his window and hopefully jump to the ground, assuming the fire hadn't consumed too much of that part of the house.

Dean led the charge, scrambling up the stairs even as flames licked at the railings as the fire climbed higher. He knew what he would see when he made it to Sam's old room, so he didn't look up and he didn't stop moving.

But his brother did.

John slammed bodily into his youngest son as Sam skidded to a halt, eyes locked on the ceiling. There were no flames in this room, but the body pinned to the plaster, red spreading across her white nightgown, was hard to miss.

"Mom," he whispered, and the resemblance to his dream of Jess, pinned to the ceiling and bleeding to death, had him rooted to the floor of his old room.

"Sammy." She smiled down at him with tears in her eyes. Blood dripped from her stomach and hit his cheek.

He was shaking as John grabbed him by the arms and spun him around, forcing his eyes away from the visage of his mother's death. Unlike the other two men in the room, Sam had never seen it. And while he'd dreamt of the exact scenario with Jess, so much so that he felt physically sick at the mirror image, he still hadn't been prepared for the way the real thing stole his breath or burned achingly deep in his soul.

"It isn't her, Sam!" John was yelling, and the voice sounded like it came from a thousand miles away, through an ocean of noise. His father was shaking him, refusing to look up at the image of his wife, who was now asking him why he had left her, where he was, why he hadn't saved her. But he ignored each and every sobbed question. He'd been plagued by them for weeks now, and he knew it wasn't his wife who was asking.

Sam finally centered himself, reaching up to grab his dad's wrists as the world came back into focus and the image of his girlfriend pinned to the ceiling was replaced by his dad's worried face. He nodded numbly, keeping his head down as he turned back into the room and made for the window. Dean had one leg out, the other still dangling inside, ready to leap back into the nightmare to save his family.

The younger Winchester hit the windowsill hard, but he didn't stop. He scrambled up and through the small portal as his brother began sliding across the roof. Bright light ignited behind them, and Sam couldn't help the instinctual turn of his head. But John was directly behind him, blocking his view of the fire flaring along the ceiling.

"Keep going, son. None of it's real."

He knew that. He did. So the hunter nodded and slid his way down the shingled roof. Dean landed on the ground below, rolling out of momentum. Sam dropped heavy beside him, his extra half foot of height keeping him on his feet. John landed beside them with a grunt and the three boys moved away from the fully engulfed house as it crackled and burned.

John finally let something flit across his features as he watched his family's house, the little fixer-upper he had worked tirelessly to buy, had spent years making into a home with his wife, crackle and give to the hungry flames.

And within, the love of his life. Again.

"We gotta keep moving." Dean gave his father's arm a tug and John nodded. It wasn't smart to stay in one place. He turned after his boys but stumbled at the sudden, unnatural pull deep within his body. He gasped, falling to one knee to brace himself against the suddenly tilting world.

"Shit," his eldest was swearing, trying to steady him. "It's feeding off of him!"

Sam dropped to a knee, grabbing John's head to steady him. Brown eyes darted between his own, thoughts racing across that quick mind that had gotten him a free ride to Stanford.

"It hasn't fed on you before," Sam said as realization settled in his stomach like lead. He looked up to his brother. "Why would it start now?"

Dean reached down and hauled their father to his feet, slinging one arm over his shoulder to support him. "We know what it is now. Game's up; either it doesn't need dad anymore, or it's given up on getting his location. Either way, we gotta get out of here _now_."

It became obvious as they made their way down their old childhood street, that the small bites the Baku had taken out of Sam and Dean had been a meager snack at best. John, being the host of the dream, was the salad, entrée, whole bottle of wine, after dinner aperitif, and a heaping dessert all put together. If the way he was listing to the side and gasping through shallow, pained breaths was any indication, the Baku was tucking in for a hasty, gluttonous meal.

They stumbled together across the lawns of several houses before Sam took the lead, changing directions to slip between two homes. He pulled open the wooden gate that closed off the side of the house, holding it for his brother and father to struggle through. They hobbled past trashcans and recycling, into the fenced yard. There was a door between bushes, probably leading to a laneway or another yard. Unlike the side gate, this one was locked.

Sam climbed up the five foot wooden structure, straddling the top and leaning back over for his brother to heft John up. The older hunter grumbled at the treatment, but it was obvious he was having difficulty standing on his own. Every pull of the Baku sent him staggering in a different direction, like being tossed back and forth on the deck of a very small boat on very rough seas.

Dean managed to haul John up enough for Sam to get a sturdy grip around his middle, and together they were able to push-slash-pull their father up and over the gate. As soon as Dean knew they'd cleared the other side and started moving through the next yard they'd landed in, Dean hopped up and over the fence.

And came face to face with Castiel.

"Jesus!" Dean's back slammed into the fence in a purely instinctual reaction to having another person's face appear out of nowhere, inches from his own. He dug his fingers into his chest, where his heart was racing and lungs struggling to find the air he'd tried to swallow instead of inhale a minute ago. "What the hell, Cas!"

The hunter straightened up as his mind moved much faster than his body. "Wait, why are you here?"

"You need to wake up, Dean. Right now." Cas took a step toward him and the hunter immediately raised an arm to stop him from doing the Jedi, two finger mind trick.

"No, wait a minute. Dad-"

"Bobby Singer is in danger. You must wake up."

Cas pressed his hand to his forehead before he could reply.

-o-o-o-

They made it through the yard, down the side of yet another house, down the drive and onto the sidewalk before Sam paused. He was panting from the exertion of pulling his father's weight alongside him, and now he was faced with a street he didn't know in a town he hadn't been old enough to remember. Sam stared down the road in both directions. The street was poorly lit, with trees and cars lining the road, and yellow street lights flickering through the leaves to illuminate unfriendly looking houses. He didn't see the Baku, or spot any dangers in particular, but he didn't feel great about either choice.

"Which way?" he asked John, though he didn't expect a very coherent answer given that all his dad seemed capable of doing was focusing on breathing. The older hunter groaned, and Sam physically felt the pull of the Baku that time as John was seemingly yanked to the side. He grunted as his father tilted to the side, nearly sliding from his grip before he managed to tighten his hold and right the hunter.

"Dean, we have to find a different way to get out of here." Sam turned his head to see if his brother had of those miraculous, last minute ideas he was so good at. The younger Winchester frowned at the lack of response, and the lack of Dean in general. "Dean?"

He turned them around, and his heart spiked at the empty driveway behind them. "Dean!"

Sam was about to set John down and go back for his brother when the ground started shaking. No, no no. The nightmare couldn't change now, not when they'd been separated. He dropped his dad a little harder than he'd meant to and broke into a run back the way they'd come.

He only made it a few feet towards the side of the house before the earth pitched and rolled, and Sam slammed into the ground and kept sliding as up became sideways.

He slid clear off the sidewalk and across the street and straight into darkness. The floor came up hard, jarring the bones in his legs all the way up to his hips. He was upright, though, as disjointing as the landing experience had been in a sudden ninety degree tilt to reality. John hit next to him, stumbling but able to catch himself before he completely face-planted.

Sam offered a steadying hand on impulse, but it was obvious from his dad's newfound balance that the Baku had, at least temporarily, stopped feeding.

"Dad?"

John nodded at his son, looking pale and shaken, but steady on his feet. "I'm alright. What happened?"

"The dream shifted again." Sam looked around them, hoping to spot his brother who could have gotten kicked out of the last world and into this one with them. But as Sam spun in a circle, he quickly realized the dream had done more than change. The world was slowly building around them, walls lined with pipes, catwalks stretching over their heads, and large vent pipes in the distance, all sliding into existence like a bad movie fade-to-black, only in reverse. Unlike the last shift, this world was slow to form and not yet complete.

Sam didn't know if that was good or bad. The Baku wasn't feeding on John, and it felt like it had been interrupted doing so. But if the Baku wasn't feeding on John, and Dean was now missing…. The last shift had been a clear offensive move to separate them. Maybe Dean was fighting back, taking up the beast's concentration away from building the world around them.

"Your brother can take care of himself," John spoke up, as if reading Sam's mind. "He'll find his way."

Sam nodded, trying to absorb his dad's confidence as his own. He didn't like the idea of Dean facing that thing alone.

What was forming around them was an old factory of some sort. Chemical, if Sam knew his factories (and given how monsters tended to like the abandoned ones, he was pretty rehearsed in them). He didn't recognize this one, but then again, he wasn't sure he'd be able to pick out ones he'd visited in the past. They tended to blur together.

"Do you know where we are?" Sam asked even as he tried to summon a weapon like he had the first time they'd faced the Baku. But slow to bounce back or not, it looked like the beast still had control of the dream; his hands remained frustratingly empty.

"No." John was staring at the world around them as it finally settled into place with a clarity that echoed reality. "Looks familiar, though. Probably a hunt."

His youngest nodded beside him and they started in a random direction. Even with Dean lost, staying in one place was always a bad idea when a supernatural baddie was on your tail. Sam hoped to find Dean somewhere in the maze of equipment and metal. But more importantly, and their primary concern now, was finding a way out of the dream world. The African Dream Root wouldn't last much longer, and John wouldn't shake this on his own.

"Can you think of any other way to wake up?" Nosie to their left had both hunters turning, going for weapons at their hips that weren't there. John gave a toss of his head and they changed direction, away from the clang of a fallen pipe that suggested they weren't alone.

"No. Been trying for weeks, every time this bastard traps me."

"What happened those other times?"

John shrugged as they ducked under some low-hanging pipes. The Baku was large, about the size of a cougar, so hopefully it would have trouble navigating the smaller areas they were fitting themselves through. Of course, it also limited their range of movement in a fight and their escape options as well.

Not that there was much escape in a dream, as they were quickly learning.

"I woke up eventually. Like you said, it never fed on me. Sounds like the damn thing was only meant to get my location."

Sam nodded, as that seemed to fit with everything they assumed before. But with the Baku after them now, it was unlikely it would let John go this time.

"Can you wake yourself up?" his dad asked. Sam had a feeling he knew the answer, given the lack of weapon or books on him, but he gave it a shot anyway. Had he any confidence it might work, he probably wouldn't have tried. Leaving his dad here alone wasn't exactly part of the plan.

He opened his eyes to the factory and the waiting face of his father.

John nodded, having expected as much. The root hadn't worn off yet, and neither of them were going anywhere until it did or the Baku let them.

His dad pulled ahead as Sam checked behind them to make sure the Baku wasn't approaching from the rear. He didn't see anything in the dark lighting but the walls and pipes around them. When he turned back, something immediately niggled the back of his mind.

John was a dozen or so feet ahead, but it felt infinitely further. Unreachable. The world around them faded slightly, turning darker than a moment ago.

There was movement to his left, the slide of paws across hard-packed dirt, and Sam suddenly realized he had seen this all before, in a vision in a dirty bus station.

John glanced at him over his shoulder.

The young hunter was moving before his dad could tell him to run. But run he did, straight into John, tackling him to the ground as the Baku soared over their heads in a lunge. It hit the ground and slid to a stop, letting out a terrifying cry that was both a roar and a trumpet.

Sam threw himself to his feet, hauling his father up after him and the two took off running.

They did not make it far before John stumbled. His youngest tried to catch him and keep him upright as they kept moving, but his hands went right through him.

Sam pulled back, freaked out at the suddenly wispy quality around the edges of his father. He tried to grab him again, and his hand sunk a good inch into the fuzzy, incorporeal bicep before he found solidity. He stared, horrified, at his half-buried hand on his father's arm.

"Run, Sammy." It was a whisper even as John swayed and Sam had to grip his shoulders to keep him from falling. They sunk to the ground and the young hunter watched as wisps of his father were tugged away from him like smoke through a vent.

He turned to face the Baku, standing twenty feet from them. His paws were spread wide on the ground, back arched low in a predatory stance. He flicked his trunk back and forth, like the twitchy tail of a cat about to pounce. Beneath him, the ground looked like viscous paint, being greedily sucked into the monster's open mouth. The edges of the walls that hemmed them in were starting to waiver where they met the floor, bleeding out and towards the Baku as the dream liquefied into nothing more than food for the beast.

They were out of time.


	22. Season 1: Chapter 21

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _- **A/Ns** : Welcome back! I'm posting a day early since all you lovelies had to wait two weeks. _

_- **Reviews** : Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I know, I know, three seconds of Cas last chapter was not enough. I knooooow. Again, no idea why I tackled a story without him in it for this long. All I can promise is that he is still coming. As much as I would love to, I can't rush it. _

_**-Chapter Warnings:** Our dream adventure wraps up with a lot of bangs! Slamming doors, guns going off, explosions of light. What is happening?!_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 21

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean woke with the same momentum he had last held in the dream. He shot out of the chair, nearly taking it with him as he stumbled back and away from an angel that didn't exist in the waking world. Gone was the quiet, suburban neighborhood in Lawrence, Kansas, replaced by the panic room. His father was still sleeping on the cot against the wall and his brother was conked out in the kitchen chair beside him, head hanging back at an angle that would punish him when he woke up.

"Shit." Dean ran his hand through his hair as he spun around. Had the root worn off? But why wasn't Sam awake too, then?

A loud bang and a crash came from above, and the hunter dropped into a defensive stance out of habit. The reverberating blast of a shotgun followed.

Bobby.

Dean sprinted out of the panic room and bolted up the stairs at a pace that surpassed fast and hit reckless. He burst through the basement door and rounded into the study, skidding to a wobbly halt at the petite girl, maybe seventeen at most, standing in the front door of the house. It was pretty obvious from the damage the wall and door had taken that she'd kicked the thing in.

Shit, Meg was early.

"You must really think I'm stupid," she spat out, taking confident strides forward. Dean searched the room around him for a weapon, pausing at the sight of Bobby's crumpled body in the corner. A shotgun lay in his limp hand, books from the shelf he'd been chucked into littered the ground around him.

Dean tried to spot movement in his chest, but he didn't have time to confirm if the old hunter was still alive. Please, God, let him be alive.

Meg came to a stop just outside of the study, a smirk on her lips. Dean's gaze snapped back to her as he stood, weaponless, in the center of the room. "I thought I said no more games."

"Says the bitch who showed up to the party early."

The demon laughed, tossing her head of curly hair back. "Oh, Dean. I never said I was _at_ Caleb's when I slit his throat. Really, after everything I heard about you Winchesters, I have to say I'm a little underwhelmed."

The hunter fisted his hands as the echo of his friend's dying breath flashed through his head. He was going to kill this bitch if it was the last thing he did. Screw the timeline and screw some things staying the same; she wasn't going to be one of them.

Meg held his gaze in their standoff before brown eyes roamed around the house tauntingly. Dean glanced at the stretch of carpet she was almost standing on, knowing Bobby had painted a devil's trap beneath it as part of their trap and dragged it over to the entryway. He just needed her to take a step forward.

"So," Meg didn't move; she just glanced curiously around the room, her eyes lingering on the door down the hall to the basement, and the open entrance to the empty kitchen on her other side. "Where's your brother?"

"Bermuda."

"Cute."

"I think he was going more for 'hot.' Bikinis. Speedos. Little umbrellas in all the drinks."

"You're funny, Dean."

Meg waved her arm and the hunter found himself flying through the air. He tried to tense his body for the hit, but it still knocked the air out of him as he crashed into the corner of the window above the couch. He hit more wall than glass, but he heard the window rattle in its frame and he considered himself lucky he didn't go straight through it. Instead, he bounced off the couch and rolled onto the floor beside Bobby with a grunt. God, his back was going to hate him in the morning.

"I'm going to skin you alive, but you're _funny_."

"I try." With a low moan, he climbed to his feet, shaking pain and books off. It took a moment to gain his footing as he nearly tripped over a heavy tome on Greek mythology, almost sprawling across the floor again. She'd thrown him harder than he'd expected. Awesome.

"You're going to start answering my questions, you know."

"Or what?" He blinked at the double vision of the demon, but it was clearing up quickly enough. "You gonna kill me?"

"Something like that." Meg took a step forward and Dean tensed as her foot brushed the edge of the carpet. But she stopped, tilting her head to stare at him.

Oh crap.

Her eyes dropped to the rug and he swore like a sailor in his head as she toed the edge of it. Lifting her foot, she flipped the corner over and the edge of the spay-painted devils trap was clear even across the room. Meg's eyes met his, the smirk gone.

"I'm so done with your crap, Dean."

She raised her hand once more and the hunter flew across the room and into Bobby's desk. He managed twist, hitting the edge with his side rather than his back, so it was his forearm that snapped with a splintering crack and not his spine. He gasped against the shock of pain shooting up his limb even as momentum from the toss sent him up and over the desk. Papers and books went flying as he rolled off the surface and hit the ground below, hard. He cried out as the drop jarred his freshly broken arm, but at least he hadn't landed on that one.

Bobby had moved the devil-trapped carpet out from the center of the room to block the entrance to his study completely, but that didn't stop Meg from darting down the hall, passing the basement door to skid into the library's secondary door just to the right of the desk. Dean scrambled back up as she appeared in the doorway, holding his arm close to his chest. He vaulted over the now cleared desk, landing on the floor with too much momentum and ended up half running, half tripping to the other side of the room.

He spun around to face Meg, who was moving around the desk and pursuing him through the study as he backpedaled as quickly as possible into the kitchen. She got in one more, good toss that sent him careening into the cabinets hard enough to see stars, before she walked straight under the devil's trap painted on the ceiling in the center of the room and slammed into the invisible barrier of the far edge.

Her eyes snapped furiously to the ceiling and widened as she realized her mistake.

On the floor of the kitchen, Dean let his head fall back to the ground and laughed loudly. He didn't bother holding back as he rolled over, deep-chested chuckles interrupted by painful grunts as all his aches and pains were jostled. He climbed to his feet, arm held feebly to his body. He stretched his back, wincing at the multiple pops, before turning to stare at the trapped demon, a grin stretching over his face.

"I can't believe you fell for that _twice_."

Meg glared at him from the center of the room, baring her teeth.

"Don't go anywhere, sweetheart. I'll be right back." Dean lumbered out of the kitchen and over to Bobby, bending down to press two fingers shakily to his neck. He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt a steady pulse, and could see the old man's chest rising and falling from the close distance. Straightening with a pained moan, he headed for the front door, not bothering to hide the limp in one leg or the way his back throbbed from the last crash. Damn demons. He ambled down the stairs on the front porch and crossed over to the haphazardly parked Impala. It took him a moment to dig into his jeans' pocket for the keys, grimacing at the constant, unintentional jostling to his broken arm.

And he had a good six weeks of useless one-armness to look forward to.

He popped the trunk, ready to get a little payback.

-o-o-o-

Sam stared at the Baku as it kept its distance. The beast didn't need to get close to do damage, as was evident by the amount of dream mass it was sucking into its open jowls. The walls were bleeding away into the floor, which was being pulled up by the Baku like a never-ending vacuum.

On the ground beside him, his father groaned against the constant pull of the creature. He was still conscious, but by the looks of his fading edges, wisps curling away from him and towards the beast, John wouldn't be aware for much longer.

The young hunter swallowed and forced himself to focus. He still didn't know how to wake John up while he was trapped by the Baku's influence. The African Dream Root wouldn't last much longer for him, either. If it kicked him out of the dream, his dad was as good as dead. He had to keep the Baku distracted long enough to find a way to free his dad from its hold.

Red flight flared through the cramped alley they'd trapped themselves in running through the factory. An explosive crack thundered off the small space, making even Sam wince at the volume. The firework lit up, true and bright, not more than five feet off the ground between them and the beast. The hunter could feel the heat from the flares.

The Baku hissed, staggering back away from his feeding fest. As the light faded and the echoes of the gunpowder explosion petered out, the creature lowered its head and stared at Sam through dangerous eyes.

The hunter eyed those tusks as the beast pawed at the ground. Crap, he'd hoped to scare it off, not make it charge.

Another firework exploded between them as the Baku reared back on its hind legs and trumpeted. Sam released two explosions of green and blue, but the creature charged, relentless. It jumped between the two explosions of light and color, skidding across the ground on the landing. Throwing it's trunk in the air, it let out a horrendous roar and sucked the firework straight into its open throat.

Sam staggered at the pull as a piece of his conscience, however small, was devoured and he felt himself fade in and out of the corporeal world.

The bursts of light faded, leaving them in darkness lit by the monochromatic illusion of a moon. The young hunter was panting by the time the pull against his very soul faded with the colors. The Baku turned to face them again, head lowered dangerously in line with his spine. This time instead of charging, it tossed its head to the side and Sam felt the world tighten around him, like a hug gone too tight and lasting too long.

He tried to summon another explosion and got nothing.

Shit.

Beside him, John finally collapsed into unconsciousness. The Baku eyed the fallen hunter before turning those fierce irises to Sam. He swore he saw the taunt there as the creature dipped his head back down and started feeding, all but ignoring the now defenseless hunter.

Sam's hands tightened into fists, nails biting at the flesh of his palms that wasn't really there in dreamland. There was only one thing left he could think of to try, even if he'd promised Dean he wouldn't do it again.

-o-o-o-

Within the circle, Meg was seething when Dean made his way back into the study. The more minor aches and pains were beginning to fade, which was a good sign for how he'd be feeling come morning. His back still spasmed with every step, causing him to limp, but besides that and the damn arm, he had gotten away with nothing more than bumps and bruises.

The rest of his family had better come out in similar condition, or Meg would be begging for a quick death before the day was through.

The demon's fury faltered when she spotted the Colt in Dean's hand. She eyed the gun, her face falling, then reddening, and then settling for something like pissed acceptance. Meg had always been a quick one.

"I should have killed you both," she spat, turning her chin up at the human as he stood just outside of the trap with her death in his hands. "I could have, you know. A hundred times."

"Oh, I don't doubt it." Dean flipped the cylinder of the old revolver open with a flick of his wrist, checking the bullet count. "But Azazel wouldn't let you, would he? See, me and Sam, he needs us alive. At least for now."

Meg shook her head, anger fierce in her eyes along with fear. "Who the hell is feeding you this shit? And where were they when I was beating the crap out of you, huh? You think they're on your side? They sure don't seem to care whether you live or die."

Dean huffed something of a laugh, though there wasn't much mirth in the sound. Meg was one of the toughest demons they'd ever dealt with. Relentless, cruel, and fiercely loyal. Crazy, even. But she had never been much for negotiation.

Probably why Crowley couldn't stand her.

"No one's feeding me anything," Dean snapped as he flicked the cylinder shut and raised his good arm to aim directly between the demon's eyes. "You want to know how I know so much? I lived through it. Been there, done that: took a one-way ride in an Angelic DeLorean."

Meg's eyes widened.

"Spoiler alert." He cocked the hammer of the Colt. "You don't win."

The bullet tore through her chest, just below her right clavicle. The demon staggered back with a gasp. Light scattered beneath her skin in microbursts of lightning, silhouetting her bones in relief. Meg met his eyes for a single moment before the bullet within extinguished her rotting essence in an explosive burst of orange, and she hit the floor.

"That's for Ellen and Jo, you demonic bitch."

-o-o-o-

Sam shifted his stance, spreading his feet shoulder length apart. He raised his hand, fingers spread wide as he focused on the creature. The Baku wasn't paying attention to him, convinced he was no longer a threat. That would be his first and last mistake.

The hunter closed his eyes and drew a slow, deep breath. He focused on that thing just beneath the surface of his skin. The thing that, here, was a dull thrum in the back of his mind, like the buzzing of electricity through wires.

It didn't take him long to find. When he did, he only hesitated for a moment before wrapping his hand around that pulsing cord of energy.

Brown eyes flew open as the thing he'd just enveloped his mind around flared at the sudden attention. It filled his body, vibrating bones and muscles and making him feel weightless and heavy in a single breath. His mass increased as gravity retreated, although he knew neither existed in this place. His feet were still solidly on the ground when he checked, but damn if it didn't feel like he was struggling just to stay connected with the earth.

The Baku stopped feeding, lifting his head to stare. Sam met the thing's gaze head on, squaring his shoulders and clenching his jaw. This monster picked the wrong hunter to mess with.

His physical hand, clenched in a fist as surely as his mental hand wrapped around that throng of darkness within him, spread open. The energy within him practically sang and his whole body shook from the vibrations it caused within him.

It wanted out, and he would let it.

The Baku winced, ducking his head with a hiss. It staggered back a step, eyes full of confusion and the first flickers of doubt. The creature doubled down, pressing his feet hard into the ground against the pressure building from the tiny human. It tossed its trunk with a roar, shoulder blades scrunching together in preparation for a pounce.

But Sam didn't care. He pushed harder, shoving the thing back with his mind and digging beneath skin that wasn't really there. The hunter searched deeper than the visage of the beast, straight through flesh and muscle that were nothing more than representation. He pushed down to the soul.

The creature hissed and writhed, tossing its body from side to side in an attempt to dislodge the presence wrapping tight claws around its insides.

The hunger could feel blood beginning to drip down his nose. He could almost taste the copper on his tongue echoing down from the waking world. He ignored it.

Sam tightened his fist when he was sure he'd found the beast's center. It felt slimy, like oil sludge dripping through his fingers. But he could feel warmth within it, beneath the inch thick darkness that snaked around the white light like a living thing.

The hunter slammed his eyes shut, focusing everything he had on the thing he currently held within his mind. He started pulling at the sludge, ripping away fistfuls of the dark goop as the creature screamed and snapped and howled.

-o-o-o-

Dean lowered the gun, savoring the momentary calm that filled him. Meg was dead and all the people she would hurt going forward would be spared. He rubbed at his chest, Colt still in hand. The strong ache that had been there since Cas jump started his consciousness was finally starting to fade.

The man from the future moved forward swiftly, dropping beside the young body the demon had been possessing. He'd shot true, a through-and-through just under the clavicle. It should be survivable for a human, though it would hurt like a bitch, but it was too close to the heart for a demon to escape when the bullet was from the Colt.

He dropped the gun beside her lifeless body to search for a pulse. Even as his fingers pressed to cold skin, he spotted the blood spreading across her chest in more than one place. Dean pulled away with a clenched fist. She had multiple gunshot wounds in her gut and breast. Caleb or Garth had gotten off several good shots, their aim as true as hunter's had to be.

Scooping up his gun, Dean stood. When it became evident that tucking the weapon into his waistline one-handed was easier said than done, he set it down on Bobby's desk instead, frustration mounting in the face of another innocent life he'd cost. A moan and a grunt alerted him to Bobby waking up, and he quickly crossed the room towards his fallen friend, side-stepping the girl they'd lost in the middle of all this.

Bobby was just sitting up as Dean sank to a knee beside him. The older man grumbled, grabbing at the back of his head and the no doubt fresh bruise there.

"You okay?"

Bobby waved the question off, obviously fine given the circumstances. He dropped his hand back down as he eyed Dean critically. "You?"

The younger hunter nodded with a half grin. He raised his broken limb by the shoulder, wincing as he did so. He extended his good arm to the older man. "Arm's busted, but otherwise I'm good."

"Good." The older hunter took Dean's offered hand and pulled himself up with a grunt, body aching. He caught the boy's eyes and held him there with a single look. "Then you can tell me all about that angelic DeLorean of yers."

-o-o-o-

Sam pushed past the pain in his head and bones, the exhaustion that dogged him down as he clawed and scrambled through the black ooze of this thing's infested soul. If he couldn't destroy the Baku, he'd tear it into shreds too tiny to harm his family ever again.

He didn't know what he was doing, but he didn't spare time to think about it. Working on instinct, he tore dripping chunks of slime away from a ball of light that shone too bright to look directly on whenever he pulled enough sludge back to expose the blinding brilliance. If he could get through to that light, he knew he could free his father and end this nightmare once and for all.

Focused on a task that narrowed his world down to the beast, himself, and that bright soul, Sam didn't notice the tremors that started beneath his feet. They ran across the surface of the world with finite trembling, and slithered up his body to fill his ears with a low, distant buzzing.

At first, it lined up with the way his body vibrated with the power coursing within and Sam paid it no mind. Soon enough, though, the buzzing grew until his ears went numb, and then it kept going. Sam grimaced, twitching his head to dislodge the growing noise that stabbed at his concentration. The earth beneath his feet began to truly shake. He tried to refocus his attention on the Baku. The buzzing grew in pitch until it was piercing, and he finally had to release the beast to slam his hands over his ears.

The terrifying realization that his hands made no difference came almost immediately, and the sound still continued to climb. It felt as though it was penetrating straight into his brain to the point of exploding. The young hunter cried out and fell to his knees, whether from pain or the tossing of the earth, even he didn't know. Fresh blood ran from beneath his palms as his ears practically wept and the world shook tried to shake itself apart.

The Baku cowered beside the factory wall, whining in high pitch bursts and clawing at its ears and head. The dream started to crumble around them. Large portions of the world split open, like tears across a canvas, and white light shone through with such brilliance that Sam couldn't look. Even with his eyes closed, the building explosion burned through his eyelids until he was sure he was blind and deaf.

It grew until he was encompassed in a light so pure and hot it burned. The piercing pitch shattered the world like glass, and everything disappeared in the explosion of white.

-o-o-o-

The 'oh crap' expression plastered on Dean's face would have been comical in almost any other situation, and it was a shame they were in the middle of a damn demon attack and Baku nightmare. Bobby would have liked to take a moment and enjoy the dumbfounded look on the cocky hunter's face. He'd been getting damn tired of the enigmatic man being three steps ahead of them for the past six months. It was nice to see some genuine surprise and speechlessness on the kid he knew.

Dean stood there, gaping like a fish at his surrogate father. He didn't know how to respond. He was pretty sure he was screwed, but even if he wasn't, part of him didn't want to try and lie his way out of this. Part of him – the bigger part – was tired of lying, tired of walking this path alone.

With nothing else to do and completely unsure of what he was supposed to say in the face of Bobby's realization, the man from the future reached out with his good arm and pulled the other man into a hug. Bobby stiffened under his grip, but Dean didn't let go.

"I wanted to tell you so many times." He said it more as an apology than explanation. He stubbornly ignored the flare in his chest and the burn in his eyes, or the relief that practically drowned him. Before the moment could get more chick-flicky than he'd already made it, Dean pulled away.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself for coming clean, when Bobby emptied a bottle of holy water straight across his face.

Dean blinked through the water at the man. He spit a mouthful of purified water to the side. When the hell had he even pulled out his flask? "I'm not a demon, Bobby."

His half-assed shrug was utterly unapologetic. "Sounded like a better option than time travel."

Dean was spared from answering as the light in the room suddenly dimmed dramatically, despite the late afternoon sun outside that should be shining in. Before either man could move to the window to figure out what the hell had happened to the sun, smoke slammed into the house from all sides as dozens of formless demons barraged the Singer home out of nowhere.

The two hunters stumbled into the center of the room, avoiding Meg's body as demons attacked the remaining warding of the house in a three hundred and sixty degree arc around them. The building shook under the assault, groaning at the structural stressors. Picture frames rattled on the walls and books vibrated right off their shelves.

Dean glanced at Bobby, eyes wide. "Holy crap."

The wards held as the demons collided against them again and again, disembodied voices screaming. Bobby met Dean's wide eyes with confusion and panic of his own. He had disabled only the minimal amount of protection needed to let Meg in, but even that was enough to seriously weaken what remained to protect the house. And under this level of assault, the rest weren't going to hold for long.

Bobby reloaded and cocked his shotgun. Dean swiped the Colt off the desk, but he wasn't even sure what to shoot at. Would the colt disable the wards if he shot through them? The thing was supposed to kill _everything,_ right?Smoke swirled violently outside the study's window, pulsing with each push.

"What the hell is this?" Bobby asked, spinning continuously at each new bang and rattle, coming from every wall. It was a true siege, a barrage against his home from dozens of formless demons. He'd never seen anything like it.

The house started shaking.

It wasn't the same hits and rattling the demons were inflicting on the old structure as they fought the remaining wards to get inside the house. No, this was new and in addition, like they needed more to deal with. First it was just the floor, trembling minutely and quickly growing until the tremors were climbing up the walls and the building rumbled and quaked until the hunters could barely keep their feet beneath them.

Dust and bits of plaster rained down on the two hunters as a crack suddenly split through Bobby's ceiling, cutting straight through the devil's trap painted on the ceiling.

And then it was gone. The shaking stopped abruptly with a final shove; the demons pushed off the walls of the house and vanished with a scream. Dean bolted for the window, pulling back the curtains. A writhing ball of black smoke was flying away to the east at impossible speeds, disappearing from visual range in seconds.

Dean looked back at the older hunter.

What. The. Hell.

Bobby, eyes bulging, could only shrug helplessly.

The silence in the house seemed deafening, and with it came the realization that he had left his brother and father in the panic room. Shouting Sam's name, Dean took off for the basement, Bobby hot on his heels.

"We're here!"

The response immediately eased the tightness in his chest before he threw open the door and spotted his brother at the bottom of the basement stairs. Sam was holding John up with an arm slung over his shoulders. Their dad looked shaken but alive.

"We're okay."

Dean took the stairs two at a time to help his little brother get their father back upstairs. He spared a glance at Sam, who met his gaze with the same expression.

"What happened?"

"Not a friggin' clue," Dean shook his head. "Meg showed early. She brought a bunch of bodiless demons with her. They took off like bats outta hell after she ate a bullet from the Colt. You?"

Sam blinked in surprised, having not been privy to the siege upstairs or been able to discern the shaking in the dream for the shaking in the waking world. He shrugged as they hefted their dad up the first steps. "No clue, either. The Baku just…disappeared in a bright light. Then we woke up."

"Well that's anticlimactic," Dean grumbled, causing Sam to send a prize-winning bitchface his way.

"Sure wasn't anticlimactic for those of us still stuck in it," he sniped back, though there wasn't much heat in it so Dean didn't bother feeling guilty about leaving his kid brother and father to face the Baku alone. It wasn't exactly like Cas had given him a choice.

So he didn't take the bait, instead helping Sammy get their dad up the rest of the stairs without further comment. He could tell his brother wasn't telling the whole truth; the smeared blood across his upper lipped suggested a hell of a lot more, but Dean didn't push. At least not yet.

He caught Bobby's eyes as they made it to the landing. Yeah, it wasn't exactly like he was telling the whole truth either. At least…not yet.

-o-o-o-

John was out as soon as they'd finished the warding circle around the couch in the study. It was unclear how much damage the Baku did down there, but he was coherent enough to be his usual grumpy self, insisting he was fine despite being unable to stay upright on his own for more than half a second.

Dean watched him from the kitchen, arms crossed and leaning against the doorway. Sam checked the warding again, referring back to the book in his hand again and again to make sure he got it right. Neither of them knew if the Baku had been killed in the explosion of light Sam described, and Dean couldn't draw any firm conclusions while his brother obviously left out a chunk of the story.

A chunk he suspected was the cause of that explosion and came from the demon blood flowing through the kid. His hand twitched with the urge to lock his brother in the panic room and sweat it out of him until he was sure he was still the Sam he knew.

"He'll be okay now," Sammy said as he set the book on one of the practically empty bookshelves and crossed the room to stand beside his brother. "Nothing should get through that circle."

Dean nodded. Too bad they hadn't done that to start with. Too bad John didn't check his messages or rely on his sons for fucking help when he needed it. Too bad Bobby hadn't called them when their dad first showed up. Too bad Sammy couldn't leave his powers well enough alone and listen to Dean when he told him not to do something. Too bad Dean had fucked everything up to start with, coming back to the past like he thought he could change anything.

The hunter pushed off the wall, tension filling every line of his body. His brother let him go. He moved over to the devil-trapped center of the room, where Bobby was wrapping the dead girl up in a sheet. He knelt down, helping the older hunter with the last of the ties.

"Her family will never know what happened," he muttered angrily, guilt eating at his insides for getting some poor kid killed.

Bobby looked at the hunter, and opted out of telling him it wasn't his fault. He knew the boy too well, and those words would fall on deaf ears when he was like this. Together, the two grabbed the girl and hefted her off the ground.

"I know some people." The two headed for the yard, pushing the screen door open and letting it clang behind them. "They'll make sure she's found without it tracing back to us."

Dean nodded, feeling marginally better that her family wouldn't live the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to their precious daughter. Wondering if she was still alive, out there living a nightmare.

"We're gonna have a talk about that DeLorean, you know."

Dean didn't meet the hunter's eyes, but after a moment he nodded anyway. They set the girl down in the bed of one of Bobby's trucks. It was out of view of visitors, and she'd have to stay there until these people Bobby knew could come pick her up.

It didn't sit well with the guilt-ridden man, but there wasn't much else they could do.

"Maybe you and Sam ought to stay here a while. Recharge. You two probably need as much sleep as your daddy, at this point."

Dean met his surrogate father's eyes, and saw the concern there clear as day. Sure, there were questions too, but Bobby didn't ask them. Not yet, at least, and Dean almost sagged with the relief of it.

"Sure, Bobby. Sounds good."

-o-o-o-

Dean went back into the study as Bobby made the call to his cleanup crew. Sam was putting books back on their shelves, occasionally glancing over to their sleeping father for any signs the Baku had come back. Dean started with the bloodstain on the old wood floors, at least until Bobby came back in, spotted him, and told him to give it up and move the carpet back in place atop it. Wouldn't be the first hidden stain in the house.

Sam waited until the grumbling hunter ambled into the kitchen to take stock of the damage before he glanced in his brother's direction, finally asking, "What happened back there?"

Dean didn't answer, dragging the rug back to the center of the room one handed, using the grunts of effort as cover for his silence. Sam let it be until the devil-trapped carpet was back in place, desk and chairs atop it like it had never been moved.

"Dean."

"Back where?" the man from the future parried, despite knowing exactly what his brother was asking.

Sam spared him a look before going back to his librarian duties. "In the dream. You disappeared."

His brother shrugged defensively, starting to pick up the papers, books, and scattered items he'd sent flying with his desk vault earlier. "Guess I got kicked out early."

The Stanford student thought that was weird. He was pretty sure it wasn't the whole story, not by the way Dean wasn't looking at him. But it was hard to tell, given that every line of his brother's body was filled with anger and pain and guilt, so much so that Sam couldn't tell where all of it was coming from.

Yes, Garth and Caleb were dead because of them, as was a young girl they didn't even know the name of. Yes, demons had showed up in an unprecedented frontal attack unlike anything they'd ever seen, and Yellow Eyes was recruiting monsters to do his dirty work.

But they'd saved their dad, Bobby was alive and okay, and Meg was dead. The amount of guilt and self-loathing radiating off his brother wasn't adding up.

Besides, given the differences in their build and weight, Sam should have burned through the Dream Root faster than Dean, if one of them was going to. Then again, given what his brother could eat in a single sitting, along with the fact he didn't exercised outside of a hunt yet never gained a pound…. Yeah, metabolism like that could have made up for the difference in their body weights.

But Sam was pretty sure the Dream Root had nothing to do with his brother leaving dreamland early.

-o-o-o-

John slept through the dinner the three hunters ordered in that night. None of them felt exactly like cooking and pizza was easy. Sam retreated after a couple slices, leaving his brother and surrogate father to finish the rest of the box and head out for the hospital. They'd splinted Dean's arm, but it was definitely broken and would need a cast. The stubborn bastard insisted it could wait till morning, at least until Sam reminded him if it started to set at all then they'd have to re-break it.

So Dean and Bobby headed out for a long night sitting in the ER waiting room of the nearest hospital while Sam stayed behind for a long night of his own, waking John up every hour or two to make sure the Baku had not returned. Dean had been more than reluctant to leave his brother in a house recently and unexplainably sieged by demons trying to bring the entire structure down. But hours after the attack, they hadn't returned.

It was a mystery that did not sit well with the man from the future.

Best the boys could figure, the demons had been trying to free Meg, only to realize she was dead and bounce as fast as possible. Bobby reasoned the Baku had probably split at the siege. Not even monsters wanted to be surrounded by demons. The white light explosion could have been the Baku's power shattering and John waking up.

None of it lined up completely, but it was the best they got.

Sam collapsed in the armchair he'd dragged over near the couch by his father's head. All he wanted to do was sleep for a week, or at least until the next "wake dad up" alarm went off on his phone, but he couldn't just yet.

Digging through his bag, he pulled out the notebook once more. It was still folded open to the scribbled notes on angels. He'd have to dig into Bobby's extensive lore as soon as he had a chance. But for now, he had other things to look into.

Sam thought back to that dream world, when he'd first found Dean standing in the darkness. The older hunter had been unsure of where he was, confused when his brother showed up, and even more so when Sam had reminded him that they were there to find Dad.

But more importantly, he had looked a good ten years older.

Sam ran a hand down his face and blew his hair out of his eyes. He put the tip of his pen to paper, but hesitated. It was crazy. He must be crazy. But so was his brother looking a decade older than he should. So was Dean realizing it and slamming up mental walls with such strength and conviction that he'd suddenly looked the right age again in the blink of an eye, and hadn't slipped again for the rest of the dream. Not even when the Baku started feeding on his nightmares and generating things and people Sam had never seen: nightmares he didn't know his brother had.

Sam stared down at the page with notes about angels and theories on demon blood.

Dean knew things he shouldn't. He acted different; heavier and older. He said things that Sam didn't understand, made references to hunts he'd never heard of, and knew what would happen next with a confidence not even psychic dreams could explain. Sam knew it was his brother and not some imposter, but he hadn't been able to explain how it wasn't the brother he knew, time and time again for the last six months.

Then there was the kid that had shown up in Dean's dream. A young boy that had made his brother look heart broken, yet happy enough to cry. Sam had suspicions on who that boy must be, but it didn't make sense. The woman had been older too, far older than his twenty-seven year old brother, and Dean had never been much for older woman. And the boy had been at least ten. Too old to be Dean's son. At least, not yet.

Sam put the pen to paper once more, scribbling down two words and underlining them several times with hard, firm marks and no more hesitation.

 _Time travel?_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 ** _-A/Ns_** _: So many things are starting to happen!_

 ** _-Meg's Death_** _: Was planned almost from the get-go and holy crap, I can't believe we finally got there! I've been holding onto that Jo and Ellen line for six months._

 _ **-Reviews** : Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter, and congrats to those who guessed Dean would be older in the dream! John didn't react because Dean slamming up his mental walls around stuff labeled 'future' actually made him look young again in the dream. Hence Sam's comment "And he's back..." So when John saw him, he looked about the right age._

 _Anyone wanna take a guess that what that dream light explosion was about (does it sound familiar, eh, eh, eeeeeeh?) I almost felt bad for the Baku at the end, but then I remembered he's evil and wanted to suck out John's brains. Also, what the heck was up with the demon attack?! Throw your thoughts my way, I love hearing them and they totally keep the muse's butt in gear :D_

 _Thanks again for reading!_


	23. Season 1: Chapter 22

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Time for some long overdue talks! First up, John Friggin' Winchester!_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 22

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean descended the stairs of Bobby's house with an aching body, rubbing at the grit in his eyes still left over from the meager amount of sleep he'd gotten the night before. He and the older hunter had been in the ER for four hours after an already long and painful day. Through bleary eyes, Dean eyed the heavy cast securing his broken ulna from mid-palm to elbow and currently sitting pretty in a sling.

He wouldn't even be wearing the annoying thing, except Bobby would kick his ass if he didn't and the older hunter was surely already up and in the kitchen. So sling it was.

Awesome.

The hunter lowered his useless arm back to his chest and hit the bottom of the stairs, only to draw up short. He could partially see into Bobby's study through the same door Meg had charged him yesterday. The desk was all back in order, or, you know, as much order as Bobby's desk was ever in: covered in books, loose papers, old artifacts, and the odds and ends of spell components.

John was awake, standing in front of the far side of the desk, inspecting something he held reverently in his hands. Dean's grip on the railing tightened as he realized his father was staring at the Colt. Dean had left the gun on Bobby's desk last night, within reach of his brother in case those demons showed back up or God knows what else attacked.

Now Sammy was asleep upstairs and their dad was staring at the gun that would kill Azazel. There was a look in his eye that Dean knew too well, even ten years later.

He took the last step down loudly, purposefully hitting the floor hard enough to jolt his father out of his thoughts. Clearing his throat, the man from the future crossed into the study, body language defensive. John stared at him, then set the gun back down on the desk.

"Where'd you get it?"

The intensity of Dean's gaze didn't waiver. "Daniel Elkins."

John huffed, shaking his head. He clenched his jaw for a second, angry at the thought of his old buddy having the damn gun that could have ended all of it. He'd had it the whole time. The jaded man ran a hand over his fisted knuckles before forcing himself to let it go. It didn't matter anymore.

"And he just let you have it?" The huff in John's words was disbelief enough.

Dean straightened his shoulders, lifting his chin. "I asked him for it."

His father's head snapped up at that, and Dean kept his chin up. John frowned immediately. There was that man once more, the one from his dream; the one that held a gun to his jaw and fully intended to use it. If the boy hadn't walked through two devil's traps, cut himself with a silver knife, and swallowed a glass of holy water after getting home from an exhausting night at a hospital to find his dad holding a gun on him from the couch…. Well, if it wasn't for all that, John wouldn't have believed it was his Dean standing in front of him.

He still wasn't convinced it was, even if it was human.

"Who told you about it?"

His son's eyes flashed dangerously. "Not you, that's for sure."

John opened his mouth to tell his boy to watch it when the thumping of Sam coming down the stairs halted both of them. His youngest son entered the room, faltering in the doorway at the obvious tension in the room.

"Morning," the sasquatch of a younger brother said a little awkwardly, looking between his brother and father. He glanced at Dean's splinted arm and clenched fists, then John, standing almost possessively close to Bobby's desk. Sam's eyes lowered to the gun sitting atop the surface.

Oh.

"How are you feeling?" He directed the question at their father, attempting to break the pressure building in the small room.

"Better, thanks to you, son." John smiled at his youngest, pride shining in his eyes that made Sam's heart swell. He so rarely got that look from his dad. It was offset, however, by the way John turned back to Dean, gaze immediately hardening. "I'm going to need that gun."

"Not gonna happen, _sir_."

John clenched his fists against the edge of the desk and Sam recognized that expression as the one that usually proceeded his older brother getting hit.

"That gun can kill the thing that murdered your mother!"

Sam took a step forward, but Dean beat him to it as he threw his good arm out angrily. "Yeah, and you're gonna get yourself killed right alongside her!"

The youngest Winchester snapped his eyes to his brother. That didn't sound like speculation or worry. That was the kind of fury Dean used to cover grief. And the look in his eye was enough for Sam to know that Dean wasn't just saying it for the sake of his argument. If he really was from the future… Sam looked back at their dad, as if seeing him for the first time. Suddenly, he really, really hoped he was wrong for once.

John took a physical step back at the verbal slap to his face. Dean had never talked to him like that before, even at his most obstinate. He rallied immediately, straightening up for a good talking to, but his oldest son wasn't done.

"You want to go after the Yellow Eyed Demon, we do it together. Otherwise, tough luck; the Colt's staying with us."

The finality in those words were certainly coming from a man a hell of a lot older and more confident than Dean Winchester had ever been, at least in this timeline. Sam chanced a quick glance at his brother. Dean was going to have to tell him exactly what happened between father and son that broke the good soldier he used to be. Right after he explained that little comment about them losing their dad to Yellow Eyes. Just what the hell was coming down the road that could take down John Winchester and turn his goof-off, insecure, crass brother into this angry, sharp, hurting man before them?

Sam stepped between the two.

"Can we at least make it through breakfast before we try to kill each other?" He almost couldn't believe what he was asking, or that he stood between Dean and John Winchester, trying to diffuse a bomb. Sure, he'd seen his brother and his dad fight before, but to be honest he'd never been the one to break it up. Honestly, he'd rarely needed to. His father and brother were more the 'storm off and cool down' fighters, especially Dean. No, he rarely played the referee; usually, it was Dean standing in those shoes as Sam fought every bone in his body not to tell his father to fuck off and John used every not inconsiderable ounce of his self-discipline not to beat his son into submission.

Yet here they were; Dean looked just as close to punching their dad as John looked ready to give his oldest a good whipping. Things had definitely changed.

"I'd appreciate that." The three men turned at the new, gruff addition to the conversation. Bobby was standing in the doorway to the study, expression one part cautious, six parts annoyed. "And if you're plannin' on destroyin' someone's house – _again_ – make it someone else's. I'm too old to be cleaning up after you lot."

With that, the old hunter crossed through the room and headed into the kitchen for coffee and whatever was left in his fridge that could be scrapped together for something resembling breakfast.

He didn't stay to see what kind of ridiculous tension-filled, silent-communication looks the Winchesters exchanged. But he put Dean to work scrambling eggs when he entered the kitchen with a somewhat guilty, if not still stormy expression. Sam was put to clearing the table of old bottles, pizza boxes, and books as soon as he edged in behind his brother. John didn't bother coming to help, instead heading outside to do Lord knew what and letting the door slam on his way out.

Bobby didn't pay him much mind, happier with the company that chose to stay as he barked at Dean that he'd put too much milk in the eggs and snapped at Sam to not be messing up his organized chaos until both of them lost the tension in their shoulders and broke down into bickering between each other, the way family should be.

-o-o-o-

When breakfast was cooked up and divvied between four plates, Sam grabbed two of them and headed for the back door.

"Leave it, Sam."

The youngest Winchester paused at the screen, turning back into the kitchen to regard his older brother. Sam's face said he didn't want to fight, on either front.

"He's our dad, and he almost died."

The softly spoken words were yet another verbal slap delivered that morning. Dean's expression flashed to something hurt and haunted before he looked away, burying it under self-righteous anger. Sam pushed the door open with his back and slipped into the salvage yard.

-o-o-o-

His dad wasn't hard to find. John hadn't gone far, leaning against the bumper of an '82 Ford pickup that had seen better days. Sam settled against the car beside his father, handing him a plate of scrambled eggs and a couple pieces of buttered toast. It wasn't much, but as Bobby had griped over the stove while cooking it, it wasn't like he had signed up to host breakfast for four people that morning.

John accepted the offering without a word, and Sam started picking meagerly at his own breakfast, trying to remember the speech he'd prepped on his way out here. Everything sounded stupid now, or likely to start a fight.

"That man in there." John shifted against the car, staring at Bobby Singer's house. He glanced over at his youngest, who met his severe gaze with raised eyebrows. "That's not your brother."

Sam stared at his father, eyes darting back and forth between John's, wondering exactly where this conversation was going if not a fight. With a huff, he looked down at the plate in his hands.

"So you noticed that." It wasn't a question. If anything, it might have been sarcasm. The changes in his brother weren't exactly subtle. But God help John Winchester if he suggested Dean was anything but human. Sam knew what this family did to things that weren't human. "It's Dean. Believe me, I checked. It's…a lot's changed, Dad."

John's gaze was no more relaxed; if anything, he looked harsher in the morning light as he stared at his son with a mix of disappointment and anger. "You can't be sure, son. Whoever that is-"

"I'm sure." Sam straightened against the car. " _That_ is my brother. You think Bobby would let him walk around his house if it wasn't? You think I would let him into your head? That's Dean. He's just…different."

Because he had apparently traveled back in time an undetermined amount of years and wasn't the Dean they knew at all. And yeah, Sam would be having _that_ conversation with his brother just as soon as he figured out how to approach it. Or got over the all-encompassing rage he felt every time he thought about it.

There were a dozen theoretical explanations for his brother not telling him he was a time traveler from the future. Hypothetical paradoxes and metaphysical laws Sam could only hazard at. And if this 'Castiel' had anything to do with it, possibly divine intervention as well. But Sam knew his brother better than Dean knew himself; none of that would matter to him. The only reason Dean Winchester wouldn't tell his kid brother about a secret that big was because he didn't trust him with it – didn't think he could take care of himself in regard to it. Because Sam had been dealing with that Dean Winchester for twenty three years, and a hundred more wouldn't change that about his brother.

Heaven help John Winchester if he dared open his mouth and told Sam his brother was a monster, or anything else. Liar or not, from the future or not, Dean was still his big brother. Of that, he had no doubt.

Lucky for both of them, John changed the subject. "That gun. That how you kept your girl safe?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. We came to…an arrangement with the Yellow Eyed Demon."

His dad huffed in disbelief, but it was relatively non-judgmental for the bitter hunter, so Sam tried not to jump down his throat for it. It took more effort than he was willing to admit.

"He tell you how he got it?"

The young hunter shook his head. He was pretty sure 'he asked for it' wouldn't go over any better the second time. Not to mention, he still had trouble believing it himself.

Beside him, John was shaking his head angrily. "Daniel wouldn't even tell me he had it. How the hell did your brother know about it?"

Twenty four hours ago, Sam would have jumped on that in the blink of an eye. Dean had definitely told him their dad was the one to mention the Colt. To be honest, though, he'd known that was bull in the same breath Dean first said it. John Winchester didn't share things, alcohol-induced or not.

Now, Sam was pretty sure Dean learned about the gun from entirely different circumstances. Of course, that wasn't something he was about to share with his father. So he shrugged.

"Dean knows a lot of things he doesn't tell me."

"That gun could end it, Sammy." John locked that harsh, imploring gaze on him once more. Any softness that might have been present in any other widowed father was absent in the face of the revenge and anger that was John Winchester. "It could kill the thing that killed your mother."

Sam looked away. So that's how it was going to be. John Winchester disappeared for almost a year, refused to answer their calls or show up when they needed him most, and now expected Sam to turn on his brother, the one person who had been there for him the last half year. Through Jess and her family, the yellow eyed demon and Meg, the demon blood….Dean had stayed beside him through it all.

Damn. He really hadn't come out here to start a fight.

"I think it's bigger than one demon, Dad," he protested quietly, trying one last ditch effort to keep the train from crashing. Knowing him and his father, it was an inevitable outcome. His grip on the forgotten plate of breakfast was only tightening, despite his best efforts.

He could still see Yellow Eyes standing half a dozen feet away, the ice cold grip of the colt in his hand, the pressure of its muzzle flush against his skull. He could still feel the pulsing in his vein, begging him to do it, to kill the thing that had ruined his life, that had tried to take Jess away from him, for nothing more than a damn game.

Did John think he didn't want the demon just as dead? Jess's life was riding on them ending this. His future with her was riding on it. God, he had wanted nothing more than to shoot that bastard right between his horrid yellow eyes.

But it hadn't been about him. This couldn't be just about him. That was something John Winchester would never be able to act on. This was still about revenge for the jaded man, no matter how he tried to color it with honor or justice.

Sam looked back at his father in the face of his silence, only to stop at the sight of the man looking back at him. He could see it. He could see it in the lines of sorrow around his father's eyes, the crease in his brow, the way his hardened gaze had turned more desperate than angry.

John Winchester god damn knew this was bigger than one demon, and still he was asking for that gun. Still, he was leaving his sons behind and cutting them out of the biggest decision of their lives.

"Did he say anything to you?"

Sam looked away from his father. The man already knew the answer. He'd known all along.

A terrifying numbness overcame him as he gripped at the edges of the plate in his hand, food all but forgotten. His dad was asking about the confrontation with Jess, but all Sam could see was that muddy parking lot. The taste of copper climbed up his throat and spilled into his mouth. He turned away from his father, trying to keep the bile from rising. Hastily, he placed the plate on the hood of the car with a clatter. A piece of toast fell off, sliding onto the metal.

He didn't want to admit it out loud – not to John Winchester, who had no room for grey in his black and white world. Not to his hunter father, who drew the line in life between human and everything else. Right now, Sam didn't know where he existed on that line, not anymore. He really didn't want to know where his father would put him either.

The college kid swallowed, finally turning back and leaning against the truck in a parody of normal that hurt his soul. He clenched his hands in fists. He didn't want to lie. Lying was all the Winchesters seemed to do to each other, and he was sick of it. He refused to be a part of it any longer.

"You first."

He looked back up at his father, mustering every ounce of his anger, every ounce of betrayal and fear, and forced it into strength and resolve. John watched the boy before him and wondered, with no small amount of pride, when the kid had grown up.

"I don't know much," he conceded, taking a deep breath of the cool morning air as he turned his eyes up to the blue sky, dotted with clouds. He and his youngest had never been on the same page. Hell, most of the time they weren't even in the same book. They lived in two very different worlds, both unable to cross into the other's understanding. But what that demon had done to him…That was on John. It was a father's job to protect his children, to protect his wife. And he'd failed them all.

Damn, it had hurt to learn it. He'd suspected something for a while, but the confirmation of finding another kid that bastard had touched, of hearing his parents talk about the night, about the blood… He glanced back at his son, at the boy with the demon blood who was destined to kill, if that demon had any say in it. The kid would never know how badly John wanted to spare him that, how desperate he was to kill the monster before he could dig his claws in any deeper.

"He…. He did something to you as a kid," he finally admitted, unsure how to best say it. If confirming it had hurt, telling Sammy was a thousand times worse.

"He bled in my mouth."

John's gaze snapped to his son's and he had no words for the surprise blanking his mind. How had Sam- had the demon told him? Why would Yellow Eyes do that, what advantage could it possibly give him?

His dad's silence was reaction enough. Sam shoved himself off the car, anger eating at every inch of him even as he fought it back.

He really hadn't come out here for a fight.

"You knew," he bit the words out with enough venom to make John Winchester flinch. He spun back on him. "How long?"

"Sammy-"

"How. Long."

John couldn't keep his son's gaze, looking down at his hands. "Not long. I suspected something for a while, but I didn't know what he really did to you until…about a month ago."

Even angry, Sam's mind never stopped, and he connected the dots easily enough. "When he came after you with the Baku.

The vein under his dad's ear ticked as he worked his jaw, remembering too easily the close calls he'd had the past couple of weeks, culminating with the Baku. "Guess I was getting too close."

He looked up at his youngest, who was standing with a wide stance, squared shoulders, and clenched fists. Like a caged animal, Sam seemed a moment away from blowing up.

"I'm closing in, Sammy. The fact he's coming after me is proof I'm getting to him. I'm close, son. With that gun-"

It was the final push that John Winchester never could see coming when it came to his youngest. Sam, sick of his father seeming to only care about his revenge over everything – over his own well-being, over the inclusion of his sons, over the lives they were trying to lead – finally exploded.

"You're not the only one invested in this, you know!" He took a step towards John, who stood from the truck, knowing the sharp lines of a man about to throw a punch. Sam stopped himself at the single step, but he knew the anger coursing through his veins wouldn't be held off a second time. "Jess's life, my life, Dean's life – we've all got something in this, Dad. It can't be about revenge anymore!"

"You think that's what this is?" John countered, voice raising to match Sam's. "You think stopping that yellow eyed bastard is just about avenging your mother?"

"If it isn't, then why the hell aren't you letting Dean and me in? We can help, dad, we have always been able to help. It's what you _trained_ us for! Let us!"

John turned away from his boy, frustration clear in the taut muscles of his back. "It's too dangerous, I told you that-"

"Bullshit! I am so sick of you and Dean trying to protect me. You dragged me all over the country, raised me like a soldier, made me murder things before I was old enough to drive. I learned how to stab a werewolf in the heart before I learned about the damn birds and the bees, Dad."

John spun back around, face reddening in the face of yet another round of the same argument he'd had a thousand times with his stubborn, bleeding heart of a son. "It isn't murder. I have told you-"

"It is murder! We _kill_ things, some of them just trying to survive!"

" _Evil_ things!"

"Who are we to decide that?" Sam shook his head, jaw clenched. "We don't get to play God just because a demon killed your wife or my mom."

John's fists shook at his side as he loomed before his boy, despite the good half foot Sam had on him. "You watch your tone with me, boy."

"I'm not a boy," Sam bit back, matching his father's anger and intimidation step for step. "And I'm done taking orders from you."

He spun towards the house, stalking back with blood still boiling. He hadn't hit his dad, though, so that was better than some of their previous fights, at least.

"Don't you turn your back on me, Samuel!"

Of course, there was still time.

"Like you turned your back on us?" He spun on his heel, standing ground like he always had and always would against his old man. "I was _dying_. Where were you? We _needed_ you, in Lawrence, in Palo Alto. So many times in the last six months. But you left us. You don't get to change that now that we have something you want. You want that gun, you want Yellow Eyes? Then you can hunt him with us. But it's Dean's gun, Dean's show. I've got nothing else to say to you."

He turned back to the house.

"Alright."

The soft admission drew him up after only a few angry steps, and he glanced back at his dad. "What?"

John, staring at the ground, shuffled uncomfortably. He raised his gaze to meet his son's, and Sam could count on one hand the times he'd seen his dad look so damn regretful. "I said alright, son. It's Dean's show."

The young hunter narrowed his eyes at the easy concession, hardly willing to trust something so simple. Not when it came to John Winchester.

"I don't like it," his dad added, and there was a hint of the miffed soldier beneath the honest-to-God father in his expression. "But I get it. I wasn't there for you boys when I should have been..."

Sam didn't move, still not daring to believe the utter one eighty. John shook his head with a heavy sigh and settled back against the old pickup. He looked damn tired, almost as tired as he'd been in Sam's first vision of him and the Baku.

"You gotta understand somethin'," he began, rubbing his palm over his thigh roughly. "When your mother…passed, all I saw was evil. Everywhere. And all I cared about was keeping you boys safe – _alive_."

John nodded his head, though it hung heavy with the movement. "So, yes, I trained you. Hard. I wanted you prepared. Ready. Somewhere along the line I….I stopped being your father. I became your drill-sergeant. And when you wanted to go to school…" John huffed a breath, shaking his head side to side. "I never could accept that you and me…we're just different."

Sam stared at his dad, at the first confession he'd ever heard that they hadn't had an ideal childhood. The first time his hard-as-granite father tried to understand his world. It didn't look like it was any easier on his father than he imagined it would be.

"We're not that different," the young hunter all but whispered, a bitter grimace stretching his lips. "If Jess…if the demon had gotten to her…I think we'd be exactly the same."

It was a cold, painful confession, but one he knew was true. He had no doubt that if the yellow eyed demon had taken her away from him, like he had taken Mary away from John, he would have done anything to hunt him down and kill him, without mercy.

John lifted his head to stare at his son, eyes starting to water despite his multiple attempts to blink away the evidence. "That evil is still out there, Sammy. And it's after you now. If we can just end it…I can keep you safe, like I couldn't that night…"

The young Winchester couldn't help but see it from his father's perspective, couldn't help but empathize with the father and husband, still grieving the loss of his wife and his children's innocence. It didn't make it right, didn't fix all the wrongs, and certainly didn't change the fact that it was John Winchester who had cost his sons their childhoods, not a demon. But Sam could still sympathize with the haggard, tired figure in front of him, in a way he rarely had in his lifetime.

"It's not your job to save me from him, Dad. It's not your fault, either." Sam commented softly, the anger draining from him as quickly as it had set in. "It won't end with him."

"I know…I know, I can't-" John had to look away, fisting his hand in the material of his jeans like it was that was grounding him. "I can't see any further right now, son. It has to end with him, because otherwise I don't know what to do."

Sam crossed the space between them to resettle against the truck beside his father. "We'll face it, together. One obstacle at a time. We can do this, dad, we'll use the gun together, and then we tackle whatever comes next. We can end it, as a _family_."

His dad stared at him with as close to pride as Sam had ever seen in his father's eyes. That look was usually saved for Dean, and the young hunter had mixed emotions suddenly seeing it now. But John nodded and dropped his gaze. He didn't agree or make any promises, which didn't escape Sam's notice, but he didn't fight anymore either.

Father and son sat in a rare peace in the South Dakota morning sun, and John soon asked him about Jess. Sam's anger and worries were almost forgotten as he tried not to gush about the most beautiful woman he'd ever met, and who he still hoped to one day marry. The smile on his dad's face was one he'd never forget.

-o-o-o-

Bobby waited till he was sure Sam was out of earshot before he pinned Dean with a look.

"Alright, spill it, Future Boy."

The boy spared him a half-assed glare of his own before shifting, uncomfortable, in the kitchen chair. He glanced at the back door, then Bobby, then the door again.

"Not now. They could come back any minute, alright?"

Bobby shook his head. "That's your brother and father out there, son. You know sure as I do we'll hear the end of that conversation long before they make it to the door."

Dean shifted again, but couldn't argue the truth of it. Bobby leaned across the table, elbows supporting his weight as he regarded his surrogate son with a stare he couldn't avoid any longer,

"So spill."

Dean pealed at the label of an old beer bottle while Bobby sat across from him in silence, growing ever more impatient with each tick of the kitchen clock. Finally, he rolled his eyes with a huff, climbed up from his chair, and crossed over to the fridge. He returned with two beers in hand, clunking one down pointedly in front of his surrogate son.

When he sat down across from the man again and still only silence filled the space in front of them, he cleared his throat. "You waiting on a Christmas card, or something?"

"I don't know where to start." The confession was immediate, but quiet. Bobby had to take a moment to appreciate the gravity of the situation in front of him. His kid, the loud mouthed boy he'd helped raise from training wheels all the way up to shotguns, not knowing what to say. His time-traveling, snarky ass boy.

Bobby dragged his hat from his head, ran a hand through his thinning hair, and took a deep breath. When exactly had he become a damn den mother?

"The beginnin's usually a sound place," the older hunter snarked. Catching his surrogate son's expression – half glare, half pained grimace – he sobered. "Maybe start with whatever climbed up your butt concerning your daddy."

"Thanks for the mental image, Bobby." Dean's look definitely turned more glare. But he set the beer aside with a deep breath. "He lied – _is_ lying – about…almost everything. He knew about Azazel, about what he did to Sam and the demon blood-"

"Demon blood?" The look on Bobby's face clearly said he was already regretting starting this conversation. Dean had half a mind to shove it in his face, because _yeah_.

Instead, the elder Winchester closed his eyes, counted to ten (it didn't help), sat back and settled an intense gaze on his friend and father. "Six months ago, an angel sent me back in time from the year 2016."

Bobby, who had sort of hoped this was all still some weird joke or a really bad joke, blew out a long breath. He went for the beer he hadn't bothered opening for himself, popped the top and took a long, hardy swallow. He cleared his throat awkwardly when he'd finished, his son still staring at him. The hunter shrugged awkwardly in the face of that foreign, intense gaze. "Balls."

Dean couldn't help it, he shook his head as his face broke into a grin. "That's all you gotta say? I just told you I traveled back in time ten years!"

"What do you want me to say?" Bobby repeated his awkward shrug. "You know who wins the Super Bowl?"

The younger hunter full on laughed that time. Leave it to Bobby Singer, father of idjits, to greet his first time traveler with the severity appropriate to the situation. There were many reasons Dean thought of this man as more of a dad than his own. The thought – the reminder of both deaths to come, one significantly sooner than the other – sobered him damn quick.

The change of mood in the kitchen wasn't hard to catch on to, and Bobby set his beer back on the table. "Alright. I want all of it. Don't sugar coat it."

Dean caught his gaze, frowning.

"Start at the top, ya idjit. Lay it out for me." Bobby stood from the table. "I'll get some paper, we'll write it down and…I don't know. Figure it out, I guess."

The man from the future stared up at his friend with the same awe he'd always felt in the tenacious, older hunter's presence. He had to blink away the water in his eyes as he realized how much he'd missed that man. Damn emotions. Instead, he grinned up Bobby, the man he went to when he had to talk to someone, to work things out, to be less alone. The surrogate father who had been just as inaccessible these past six months as he had been for the last four years. Far too long, in either case.

"Man, Bobby, I missed you." He said it with a light chuckle and a sip of his beer. The heavy, awkward silence that followed clued Dean in before he'd finished swallowing. Bobby was staring at him with shell-shocked eyes and a slack jaw. Dean almost choked on his beer when he caught the look, realizing what he'd said.

Shit.

Bobby's jaw clacked shut. "I don't wanna know."

He turned into the study to fetch that paper, shaking his head and repeating it more for his own sake. "I don't want to know."

-o-o-o-

When he sat back down, legal pad and pen in hand, Dean cleared his throat awkwardly and tried to assuage the ten year expiration date he'd just inadvertently informed his father figure of. "It's not gonna happen this time."

Bobby pinned him with a look he had seen few times. It quelled monsters and Winchesters alike; few dared speak in the face of it. "I don't. Want. To know."

Dean nodded and went back to chugging the last of his beer. He had a feeling there would be several more before this conversation was over.


	24. Season 1: Chapter 23

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 ** _-Quick Reminder:_** _For anyone who hasn't read the prologue to this in a while, I wrote it as an AU to the Season 11 ending, where Amara was losing the fight but pretty much everyone was already dead. It comes up in this chapter, hence the reminder, so no one is confused when Dean says it._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** More talking! Time to catch Bobby up on everything that's coming. Well, everything accept maybe that selling his soul bit. Okay, and the releasing Lucifer part. And probably the losing Sam to the cage bit...Maybe he'll just tell Bobby the next five years are super peachy. Everything's fine, nothing to see there._

 ** _-Actual Chapter_** _ **Warning** : It's been eons since I mentioned in a warning that this story is Slash (Destiel). As you may have noticed, it's just about the slowest burn ever. And even when we do get there, I'm not much of a romance writer. I like a good romance subplot, but I'm action first and foremost. So it'll always be a nice added bit, but never the main focus. Anyhoo, we FINALLY have our first teeny tiny itsy bitsy mention of pre-slash destiel. Lol. Figured I'd be super cautious and warn you all about it anyway._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 23

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"So…"

The two sat awkwardly as Bobby tapped the pen against the legal pad and Dean stared at his beer as if everything could be blamed on the poor bottle of suds.

"Angels?"

God, Dean did not want to have this conversation. No matter how well Bobby was handling it, talking about what was coming meant dredging up so many bad memories. Memories that the hunter now felt he was pretty much damned to relive. Dean glanced up and, with a monumental effort of sucking it up, straightened from his abysmal slouch in the chair. "Yeah. Angels."

"Let me guess. Cass?"

The hunter raised his eyebrows, but didn't look too surprised.

"Sam had me looking into him," Bobby explained with a shrug. Which, yeah, Dean had sort of figured. "Can't say I'd have ever gotten to angels on nothing more to go on than black hair and blue eyes."

Dean practically choked, coughing around the mouthful of beer as he hacked at his chest. "What? H-how?"

Bobby looked torn between answering and making sure the kid wasn't about to swallow his own esophagus, giving him plenty of time to realize the answer on his own. Missouri Mosley. She was the only one who could have glimpsed Cas from his head. Damn that woman. But of course, it was probably his genius little brother who'd put it together, asked the right questions, and refused to let it drop without answers.

"That kid," he muttered, ever amazed by his brother's tenacity.

"Tell me about it," Bobby chucked out in agreement. "So, this 'Cass'…He one of the good guys?"

"Uh….yeah." Dean cleared his throat, pulling his thoughts away from his brother. "Castiel, holy tax accountant of the Lord. He might have started on the wrong side of things but…yeah, he's one of the good guys."

"Tax accountant?" It was Bobby's turn to stare at him with raised eyebrows.

Dean let out a laugh, taking a swig from his beer. "He was a total nerd angel."

The older hunter didn't miss the bitterness that filled that chuckle, or the way that despite the evident pain in his boy's face, Dean was still smiling almost nostalgically at the thought of this Castiel. It was damn weird to see the boy who followed in his father's black and white footsteps get that kind of look on his face talking about something very much not human.

"'Was'?"

The smile on his face dropped pretty quickly, and Bobby almost felt bad about it. There was something about this Dean, this kid from the future, that made the older hunter wonder just how often he got to smile in his world.

"Yeah." Dean's eyes strayed down to the bottle in his hands and stayed there, though it was obvious from the pained glaze in them that he was seeing anything but Bobby Singer's kitchen. "He was hurt pretty bad when he sent me back. I don't think- I don't know if he made it."

It was the truth, too. Every time Cas popped up in his dreams, at the lake or pulling him out to save Bobby, Dean was sure. He was _sure_ that at least some part of the angel had made it back in time with him. But there was no consistency – the guy didn't come when Dean called for him, _begged_ for him. The hunter went to sleep praying to dream and usually got nothing. He more often showed back up when Dean or Sammy or Bobby were in danger, but even that was inconsistent. The guy just seemed to pop up randomly.

If that jackass was pulling another 'stay away to protect you/lead a normal life/it's not my place' crap move, Dean was going to have serious words when he finally caught the bastard.

"You got something making you think he did?" Dean glanced back at Bobby, distracted by his own thoughts. The confusion on his face was must have been clear enough for the old hunter to add, "You said you weren't sure. Could he have made the jump with you? Not that I know how _time travel_ works but…did you need a co-pilot?"

Dean swallowed, dropping his eyes again. God, he didn't _want_ to have this conversation! His first thought was Cas would have made the jump if he could have; he wouldn't have left him alone in this. But…was that even right?

They hadn't exactly been on great terms before the end, and Cas had picked up that nasty martyr complex from the Winchester boys pretty damn quickly. Stay behind, hold them off. He'd been doing that well before two human hunters tried to teach him humanity and royally screwed it up several times over.

Back in that graveyard, he had been hurt bad – how bad, Dean couldn't be sure – but he'd seen the look in his eye, known that final good luck that was really goodbye. It was entirely possible Cas just didn't have the juice to do more than send him back. His grace shredded, possibly on lockdown from Lucifer, all but a step away from mortal before it all started….

The last time he'd been that weak, sending Dean and Sam back had been ugly and left him laid up for days. To be truthful, Dean had been working pretty hard avoiding thinking about it. About what that same act would cost the angel when you added 'fatal wound' to the equation.

He cleared his throat. "I've been seeing him. In, uh…in dreams."

"Yer psychic dreams?"

Dean pinned Bobby with a look that said don't push it. The old man new damn well those dreams had been a cover the entire time, if that sarcastic comment was anything to go by. Not that Dean could blame him, given how much lying he'd been doing to his family lately.

"Sam's dreams a lie too?"

"No, he's really having visions. Azazel's causing them." Dean scrubbed at his face and ended up burying his head in his hand, propped up on the kitchen table. How the hell was he going to explain all of this? There was just too much.

"One step at a time, son. Go back to yer angel."

"He's not _my_ angel," the elder Winchester quipped back. "Why does everyone always call him that?"

Bobby wisely declined to answer, though the smile on the kid's face the first time he brought him up and the devastation he carried all over him when talking about his death seemed pretty damn conclusive to him and, he suspected, everyone else.

Dean Winchester, closet gay for an Angel of the Lord. Well alright then.

"He used to show up in my dreams when he needed to talk. Or if he couldn't find me." Dean said it like he knew how crazy it sounded, how crazy all of this sounded. Bobby tried really hard not to react with the appropriate level of crazy that this all really, really was.

"Right." Okay, so there was at least some judgement there, despite his best attempts. When Dean leveled a look at him, he cleared his throat and moved on. "What makes you think it ain't him, then?"

"Because I'm pretty sure he's dead," the man from the future answered bitterly. "Time travel…he did it once before, when he was weak. Bobby, it almost killed him. He was spitting up blood for days."

Dean shook his head at the memory of the angel popping back into existence hours after he should have, spouting red and genuine surprise to still be alive. "Besides, it's not…it's not the Cas I know. It's like…a memory of him."

At his friend's confused look, he clarified, "He was always awkward as hell with pop culture, references, stuff like that. You know, basically humanity. But he was getting there. Even started binging Netflix."

Bobby frowned. "What's Netflix?"

Dean stared at him for only a moment. "Son of a bitch." He pointed his beer bottle at the confused hunter. "The past _sucks_ , you know that?"

When Bobby gave him the stink eye at his unhelpfulness, he settled down and continued, "Point is, _that_ Cas isn't the one showing up in my dreams."

"Who else could it be, then?"

Bobby wasn't trying to cause trouble, Dean knew that, but the question still rankled him. It wasn't anyone. It was his own mind, supplying his lonely, broken self with his best friend. But that….that wasn't right either. Because his own mind couldn't kick him out of his own subconscious when Dream Root had him securely under. It couldn't warn him of impending attacks, either, which Cas had done more than once now. Meg showing up early, that possessed Jehovah's Witness back when they still had Jess with them. He'd woken up shortly before each of them had made an appearance, immediately after a push from the dream angel.

Dean's instincts were good, but they weren't _that_ good. Which left a very different version of Castiel as the only possibility. Not that that made much sense either.

"He still exists in this timeline, probably up in Heaven right now. But that Cas doesn't have a clue who I am yet." Dean met Bobby's gaze, the clear confusion in his own eyes hoping someone, anyone, could make sense of all this. "We don't meet for another two, three years. He's definitely not dream-hopping through my noggin."

"But you're seeing him."

"Yeah, but I just told you, it can't be him,"

"Unless he took that DeLorean ride with you." Bobby shrugged. "Maybe some parts got left behind."

Dean didn't answer, staring at the table top. Obviously, the thought had occurred to him enough to break down and pray, to plead for him to answer, to be alive and here, however weak or broken.

Cursed or not.

But he'd gone down that road before, lost the angel so many times and hoped so often he'd be back. He knew what false hope got him, and this time he didn't have Sam to talk him off the ledge of utter reckless stupidity he ran along anytime he lost the two important people he had left. So he was trying really hard not to hope at all.

"What's he saying in these dreams of yers?"

Thankful for the change of subject, however minor, Dean replied, "That I'm changing too much."

Bobby frowned and glanced down at the still blank legal pad sitting in front of him. "What have you changed?"

"Jess is alive." Dean's voice broke halfway through, but he cleared his throat and the two hunters did as all manly men do: they pretended it hadn't happened. Instead, Bobby met his emotional gaze with surprise and so many questions. "Brady killed her that night in Stanford, on Azazel's orders. Burned her on the ceiling, like…like mom."

"Jesus," Bobby breathed out, glancing back down at the paper. His eyes snapped back to the kid. "Sam?"

"Got back into hunting purely on revenge." Dean shook his head. "He was just as bad as dad…angry, reckless….He never saw what was coming. None of us did."

God, Bobby didn't want to know. He really, really didn't want to ask. But if the dread pooling in his stomach was any indication, it was worse for the kid sitting across from him. "And what's coming?"

"The apocalypse."

-o-o-o-

Bobby cleared his throat, chugged half the fresh beer Dean had pulled from the fridge in the silence that had followed that bombshell, then cleared his throat again. "So…the end of the world. Right. That why yer angel sent you back?"

Dean actually laughed, causing the older hunter's eyebrows to climb right into his receding hairline. "No," he answered with a jaded grin. "Not even close. We beat the apocalypse, and the angels that tried to restart it, and the mother of monsters that came afterwards, and Abbadon, and every other piece of crap life tried to throw at us."

The hunter realized his chest was tight, almost to the point of pain, and he was having trouble taking deep breaths, possibly because he hadn't actually taken one throughout the building rant and accompanying anxiety it came with. God, they were going to have to face that all again. His hand ached where it sat on his thigh in a tightly clenched fist. It took a moment, but he released the tension with a shaky breath. There was so much crap coming, so much he had to stop, and he couldn't even fix the friggin' apocalypse.

Bobby was staring at him again with wide eyes, probably having gotten about a quarter of that vitriol. This was going about as well as he figured it would.

"Alright…" he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. What would future Sam do? He was the one good with words. "Let's….let's start from the beginning."

-o-o-o-

The beginning was actually the end in this case.

"So, this darkness, God's _sister_ …that's why yer angel sent you back?"

Dean scrubbed at his face. He'd given the old hunter a monumentally minimalistic rundown of Amara breaking free of her binds – conveniently leaving out what exactly her prison had been or just who released it and _how_ – and finishing with him and Sam and Cas taking her on alongside God.

He left the whole Lucifer bit out, too. They so weren't ready for that.

"He's not _my_ angel. But, yeah. Don't- Don't worry about it, it's not going to happen this time." Bobby raised a brow and Dean couldn't quite look him in the eye at the utter lack of belief there. He tried not to take it personally. Bobby was practical, and always operated with a backup plan. Dean was more of a….edge of the seat, seat of his pants, plans are for sissies kind of hunter. At least, when he didn't have a plan or a brother to make up a plan, that's how he rolled.

And right now, he didn't have crap amounting to anything close to a plan.

"It's not," he reiterated with some stress on the negative. "But if things go that way – and that's a long way off – I'll tell you everything. I swear."

The old hunter didn't look impressed, but he didn't press it. He was starting to get the feeling that if they covered everything in detail, they'd never get it all down.

"So this darkness was about to win-"

"No, she was gonna lose." Dean could still feel her pain just under his skin. Her anger and, worse, regret. She'd only wanted a family. The love of the those who were supposed to love you. Yeah, she hadn't gone about it the best way, but Dean could relate only too well. "It didn't matter – it was already too late. Sam was gone. Cas was as good as dead. He used the last of what he had to send me back, I think. I don't even know if he meant to go this far."

Because time travel wasn't easy on a drained, hurting angel. Who knew what Cas's intentions had been. To send him back further, before any of it so he could stop all of it, or to drop him exactly where he had. Cas had always known more about the connections of events and the flow of time better than any of them.

Dean had four trips under his belt and still no friggin' clue about that crap, so who was to say Cas hadn't meant to come back with him too. Sure as hell would have been easier if he had.

"And that's ten years from now?"

"Closer to eleven," he answered easily, rubbing a hand through his short hair. He blew out a breath, covered it with a swig of beer, and tried to keep going. "The next, uh…the next five years are what we have to stop, though. The rest of it…. We'll deal with it when we get there."

Again, Bobby didn't look convinced, but didn't push either. He settled back in his chair. "Right. So. The apocalypse?"

-o-o-o-

"Should we go check on them or something? They're too quiet." Dean was standing at the back door, trying to spot his father and brother. They'd heard some yelling, as expected, but then nothing had followed it. No angry Samsqatch stomps, no furious venting from John. Dean was starting to worry they'd actually murdered each other.

"Leave them be and stop puttin' this off." Bobby gave him the stink eye, calling him out on exactly what he was doing. "The apocalypse."

Dean sighed and sat back down.

-o-o-o-

"Azazel wants Sam for _what_?"

Dean stood up and got them another round of beers. Bobby chugged half his in a single go.

-o-o-o-

"So…uh…Lucifer."

"Yeah, Lucifer." Dean muttered, looking down at the tabletop beneath his rough fingertips. He pushed back in his chair, leaning on the back two legs as he raised his gaze to the ceiling. "It's not just him, though. Angels want the showdown too. They aren't going to do dick to stop it."

"Showdown?" Bobby was staring at him. He was getting the feeling that expression was going to be the new norm for a while.

"Michael and Lucifer. Heaven, Hell; the ultimate Deathmatch. Winner takes the planet. Or whatever's left of it."

"…Shit."

"Yeah. I haven't gotten to the best part. Angel's need vessels, like I said. For Lucifer, that's Sam."

"Right, that's why the yellow eyed- why Azazel is prepping him with demon blood." Across from him, Bobby's brow furled. "Who ends up taking Michael to the prom, then?"

Dean just stared at him until the old man got it. It wasn't a pretty reaction when he did.

-o-o-o-

"Back up, boy, you're going too fast." The old hunter grumbled as he scribbled an endless vitriol of death and pain and pure ugliness on his legal pad. They were already several pages deep, about equal to the rounds of beer they'd both had. It helped take the edge of the crazy. Not to mention the insurmountable.

Dean scrubbed at his scalp. "Back up to where, Bobby?"

"The seals. You said there are a butt-ton of them-"

"Six hundred and sixty-six."

"-but you skipped over what that first one was. It has to be popped first, like you said, right? So….we stop that one from breaking, we're scott free, ain't we?"

Dean chewed on his lip, a pretty damn foreign act for him, born out of the very rare, white-knuckled grip his brain was trying to have on his tongue right now. God, why did they have to have this conversation! He blew out a breath.

"Yeah…about that."

-o-o-o-

"You did _WHAT_?!"

"He was _dead_ , Bobby! I had to save him!"

"People DIE, boy. It's what HAPPENS."

"Not Sammy. I won't let it."

The room fell silent. Bobby, red faced, stared at the obstinate man in front of him. Dean's fists were clenched around a bottle, eyes threatening the older hunter to push this.

"Balls." Bobby sat back, the wind in his sails depleting with the look in his son's eyes. "You're gonna do it again."

He shook his head when Dean couldn't meet his eye.

"I'm going to stop it," the young man confessed quietly, but with the kind of determination only a Winchester was capable of.

"You gotta let him go, son," Bobby whispered automatically and green eyes glanced briefly up to his. "If it comes to that, if we can't stop it…. Sam wouldn't want you to start the end of the world. To go to hell. Not for him."

"I know," was the only reply he got, muttered almost blankly from a boy who couldn't look him in the eye as he said it. "I know, Bobby."

-o-o-o-

Dean was able to remember a handful of the seals Hell had broken, as most of the battles for those had been fought between angels and demons. Of course, they hadn't learned until later that most of it as a show, with Heaven putting up a good act but purposefully throwing in the towel where it was needed.

Not that it mattered, he'd insisted to the older hunter as Bobby furiously scribbled down what he could from Dean's story. There were so many seals that anything they did to protect them would be futile. Hell would just go after the other seals, even if they were the harder ones to break. And a handful of humans couldn't protect all six hundred of them without Heaven's help, which they weren't going to get.

"All the more reason _not_ to let that first one break, boy," Bobby muttered with a purposeful look in the kid's direction. Dean didn't bother answering.

They were just getting through an abridged version of the year after Dean had been pulled from Hell by Castiel, culminating in that horrid night in the church, chasing after his blood-addicted brother, when they heard Sam and John coming back towards the house. Dean's mouth snapped shut tighter than a virgin's legs at an orgy and Bobby spared him a warning look. They were not done talking about this. Not only did the boy have a hell of a story to finish, the old hunter knew he'd left some serious details out, if the guilt-ridden gaze avoiding him several times throughout the hour-long, heavily-truncated tale was anything to go by.

Bobby tucked the legal pad off to the side, hidden beside the multiple landlines labeled for various agencies. The back door opened seconds later.

"Hey," Sam greeted as he came back in, a rare smile on his face after a conversation with his father. Even John seemed somewhat at ease as he came into the kitchen behind his youngest. Sam eyed the kitchen table, littered with a dozen beer bottles. "Uh…little early, guys, don't you think?"

Dean snorted, then wrapped his hand over his mouth and stared moodily down at the table. His brother gave him a weird look – something between concern and the infamous bitchface – before looking at Bobby for a hint. The old hunter just shrugged.

"Been a long week."

Sam huffed in complete disbelief, but the issue was dropped for the time being. Unfortunately, all that left was the silence in the room quickly escalating in tension. Dean refused to look at his father, Bobby was staring up at the corner of the ceiling as if the cobwebs up there were the most interesting thing he'd seen in a couple years, and Sam was caught between confusion and loss.

He really wasn't used to being the one in these situations. Sam figured he might just owe Dean an apology for all the times he had to play mediator in the family.

"Look, Dean, I'm….I'm sorry." John cleared his throat as he addressed his oldest, avoiding looking at the kid as much as the kid was avoiding looking at him. "I…I shouldn't have demanded the gun, or shut you boys out. I just…"

John cast his eyes upward, as if praying for strength from a God he didn't believe in and would probably try to kill if he ever met. Dean would probably put his money on John Winchester, knowing Chuck as he did.

"You're my children, and this demon is a bad son of a bitch. I can't make the same moves if I'm worried about keeping you safe."

Dean's grip on the beer in his hand, empty now, tightened as he listened to the words he'd heard before. The same comment – reconciliation, really – that had happened between their small, broken family all of forty-eight hours before it got even more broken. John had said the same words not two days before he made that deal and _died_.

Damn it, don't let it be now. Not now. It was too soon, he should have _months_ left.

"I don't expect to make it out of this in one piece," John was saying, shaking his head as he looked at an increasingly distressed Sam. "Your mother's death almost killed me. I can't lose you boys too."

The man from the future stood from the table quickly enough and with enough force to send it skidding a half foot back, rattling the empty bottles and knocking several of them over. Bobby caught one before it could roll of the table and shatter on the floor.

"And what about what we lose, huh? You're going to throw yourself in front of this, but it's gonna be me and Sam who bury you!"

Again, Sammy stared at his brother, knowing Dean wasn't talking in hypotheticals. The man standing in front of him had buried their father. Knowing their line of work, he'd probably burned him, actually. Sam ducked his head, unable to look into those angry eyes furiously blinking away tears. They shouldn't being having this conversation with Dean half drunk.

"What do you want me to say, son?" John shrugged his arms helplessly. "Killing this thing comes before everything. Before you, me, Sammy. _Everything_."

Dean's jaw creaked under the pressure of his anger.

"Dad," Sam cut in quietly, turning his pleading gaze to his father. "I don't want to watch you burn."

The sudden drop of color from John's face was testament to the effect his youngest son's words had on him.

"I wasn't old enough for mom…" Sam glanced at his brother, who was looking away now, trying to contain the anger and grief that had him seeing red. The youngest Winchester turned back to his father. "Don't make us bury, too."

Bobby watched the three Winchesters cautiously. His thoughts were right with Sam's, despite having actual confirmation from the kid across from him that John's days were numbered. But he knew the man, almost as well as his sons did, and he didn't see the hunter giving this up for anything.

"Three Winchesters are better than one," Sam insisted. "We need to do this together."

John finally dropped the tension in his shoulders, his body sagging with the weight of the last twenty two years. He was so damn tired, and just wanted this over.

"Okay," he whispered, closing his eyes. "Okay, together."

At the table, Dean let out a silent breath, the rage filling the lines of his body fading slowly, as if he didn't trust the sudden truce. He spared his father a cursory glance, and the older hunter nodded firmly at him. Dean didn't say anything, but he returned the gesture with only a slight hesitation.


	25. Season 1: Chapter 24

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Things come to head as ten years of grief and anger bubble over for Dean, and John makes a stupid choice._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 24

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The rest of the day passed almost like a normal family. They sat and talked like a normal family, caught up on their lives like a normal family. Sure, the topics of choice weren't exactly normal. Taking down an urban legend or shapeshifter were hardly common dinner topics, but still, for the Winchesters it was approaching dangerously normal.

Which is why there was no way it could last.

"How did you know it was a Baku?" John eventually asked as they circled topics, starting with their frankly miraculous save of Jess and the Moore family. Dean hadn't volunteered much information, letting Sam tell most of the stories with minimal input supplied by the man from the future. But it was obvious with every adventure or nightmare they recapped that there was a running them of one thing missing from each: information and where they got it.

"Uh…" Sam glanced at Dean, unsure what to say. His older brother didn't look particularly helpful, expression already growing stormy. The younger Winchester swallowed, looking down at his hands resting in his laps as he sat on the old, sagging couch. He knew they would have to tell their father eventually, but he'd sort of hoped Dean would provide more support than a brooding figure in the corner of the room. "I had a vision."

John straightened, brow furling as he stared at his youngest boy. When he spoke, his voice was that terrifying flat tone that always proceeded bad memories for both boys. "A vision."

"He's been getting them since Palo Alto," Bobby chimed in from his desk, purposefully keeping his tone nonchalant, like it was old news. In truth, the three men around John Winchester were watching him with the tension of skilled animal wrangler who knew, despite years of practice, that what he was approaching was still a pissed off lion. No matter how experienced you were in handling that beast, it was always going to get in a few good swipes.

"They, uh…they happen randomly, far as we can tell. First, it was nightmares, but now they happen during the day, too. Whatever I see always seems to come true, pretty reliably." Sam shrugged, trying not to feel small under the eye of his father, who somehow always made him feel like that. For the most part, it resulted in anger and defensiveness that bordered on the dramatic. But it always started with that feeling of being too small, too disappointing, to ever be a worthy son to the man across the table from him. "We don't really know what they mean."

Their father stood in terrifying silence, turning his back on his family as he ran a hand down his mouth. It was only a moment as he crossed the room, almost pacing, before he turned back around, but the tension in the room made it feel much, much longer. John leveled his boys with a hell of a glare, settling on his oldest. "Something like this starts happening to your brother, you pick up the phone and you _call_ me."

Dean, who remembered this conversation well enough to know he had no interest in repeating it, opened his mouth for a lashing of his own. The last time they'd had this talk, he'd finally stepped out of his soldier mold, finally stood up for the brother who cared about him a hell of a lot more than his dad did. He wasn't the good little soldier his father had raised anymore; that kid had died in Hell a long, long time ago.

"Call you?" Sam stood up from the couch to meet John's height. Dean blinked, looking over at his younger brother who beat him to the punch. "Like Dean _called_ you when I was dying? Like I called you from Lawrence?"

The older of the two brother's turned his head at that, eyebrows raised. "What?"

For a moment, Dean panicked, thinking of the cosmic consequences of John Winchester showing up in Lawrence with an uppity psychic already reading too much off of the man from the future. But he pretty quickly remembered he'd called John the first time around, and it wasn't like the man had shown up back then, either.

Sam trucked on right ahead, ignoring his brother. "All we ever do is _call you!_ We called you when we found a demon who wanted to murder my girlfriend on the anniversary of mom's death! We called you when Yellow Eyes agreed to spare her if I kept hunting. We called you when we knew a Baku was on your tail. Don't bother lecturing us for not telling you about the least crappy of all the cards we've been dealt lately!"

Dean stared at his brother, eyebrows raised to his hairline and the corner of his lip pulling up as he, for possibly the first time in his life, watched his brother yell at his father and felt nothing but pride. He turned his green gaze back to John Winchester with a clear look of 'what he said.'

Their dad frowned between the both of them, but finally settled back into the kitchen chair they'd dragged to the edge of the den hours ago. He was silent for a moment, head hung, before he nodded. He glanced up to meet is youngest son's fiery gaze. "You're right. I'm sorry."

Sam glanced at his older brother, who gave him a miniscule nod, and took his own seat. Bobby, eyebrows raised as high as Dean's, glanced between the three Winchesters.

"Well, now that that's off yer chests," he pulled his feet off the edge of his desk and straightened up. "How about you tell a story of your own, John. Like how you knew the thing chasing after you and yer boys was a demon. Last time I saw you, ya still didn't know squat about that yellowed eyed bastard."

The grizzled father sat in a contemplative silence for a moment. With a slow nod, he raised his eyes to his sons, and began. "Truth is, he hadn't shown himself in twenty years. Our whole lives we searched for this demon, right? Not a trace. Just…nothing."

"Till you caught his trail," Dean added, remembering the spread of research his father had presented them the first time he'd finally agreed to work with them.

"No," John huffed out, the sound self-deprecating. Both his boys frowned at him. "Not at first. I was on a hunt in Arizona six months ago. There was signs worth checking out: odd weather, crop failure, livestock mutilation, that sort of thing."

"Demonic omens."

John nodded at his youngest. "Yeah. I thought it was a run-of-the-mill demon hunt. Rare, but not unheard of. At least, until I got there. There'd been a fire the night before. It was a small town, so it was the talk of it. Only one room in the house had burned."

"The nursery." Dean's quite confirmation was the loudest thing in the tense room. John nodded, regret flickering through his hard eyes.

"And it took the mother with it."

"Just like us…" Sam stared at their dad. Realization was starting to settle over his features.

"The kid was six months old, to the day." John continued, glancing to his youngest as he started putting the pieces together. "Just like you were, Sammy."

"I was?"

Their dad nodded, turning his gaze down to his hands as they rested on his legs. "So I knew what it was. A demon. More importantly, that bastard was _back_. After all this time… I started looking for other signs. I looked back through the weather readouts for Lawrence and sure enough…"

Sam exchanged a look with Dean, though they both already knew what was coming.

"There were signs a couple days before your mother..." John let out a loose breath, a reminder to the two boys that their father was still mourning the death of his wife. "I chased the thing across half the damn country, following omens from one town to the next. I never made in time to save any of them."

The confession was weighed with the same guilt he'd spoken out in the salvage yard, admitting his failure as a father to his youngest son, who had never seen it that way and never would. John was many things, had made many mistakes, but what happened to their family that night had never been on him.

Sam swallowed, trying to remind himself it wasn't on him, either. "Every time, there was a fire?"

John shook his head. "No. Sometimes there was nothing. All the omens, but no house fires, no deaths."

Dean pushed himself off the wall, uncrossing his arms. "He only kills the parents if they interrupt him."

John's gaze followed his oldest son like a hawk, eyes narrowed. Sam, on the other hand, glanced at his brother in surprise.

"Interrupt him?" He frowned for a moment, before Dean caught his gaze. Sam stiffened, memory flashing back to that church and the empty jar in the mud. He looked away, self-loathing eating away at his expression and his insides. "You mean the blood."

John nodded, albeit slowly. "That's right. Far as I can tell, there are other kids out there; kids the demon did something to who still have both parents. Lead normal lives. But they're not exactly normal."

Sam worked hard to quash the flare of jealousy his dad's words immediately sparked within his soul. "How many are there?"

Their dad shook his head. "It's impossible to know. Two dozen, maybe more. Who knows how long he's been doing this."

"We need to find them." Sam shifted almost urgently. "If there are more kids out there like me, with visions or- or powers, we need to find them. Try to help them!"

John was already shaking his head, but Sam pushed on. "If Yellow Eyes did something to them…they could be experiencing things too. He said we were part of a…race. A game or something that demons were betting on. If there are more kids out there, we need to save them!"

Dean saw the way his father's head snapped to his youngest son at the revelation. The man from the future immediately tensed. John hadn't known that last time. At least, he didn't think he had. Dean honestly didn't know how deep John's knowledge of Azazel's plan went. He was pretty sure his dad hadn't know about the apocalypse. It had been kept too under wraps, not to mention John would never have left his boys to face it. Dean didn't waste time conjecturing whether John would have stuck around out of love, patriarchal obligation, or just being a control freak who didn't trust anyone else to handle a problem that big.

But Bobby was already talking it through for them, and with a hell of a lot more reason than John Winchester. "Only problem there, is there's no way of trackin' 'em. We could probably find the ones that had house fires as kids, but if this thing didn't leave signs on every stop, it'd be a crapshoot guessing which kid he messed with twenty years later. We'd be up to our eyeballs in research that could take years to lead anywhere."

"We don't have years," Dean bit back, with some confidence that that was exactly where Bobby had been leading. Not that it would hurt to track down Azazel's other kids. They could stop a lot of pain, everything from warning them about the Battle Royale to come, to stopping Azazel from hurting future kids.

Dean's brain paused on the thought, having never given it time before. What did happen to those kids Azazel had been infecting in 2005 and 2006? They would be too young to participate in the free-for-all to be Lucifer's vessel. They were too young for anything.

Had the yellow eyed bastard popped back up just to catch Sam and John's attention? Or had he been turning more children for a purpose? In the years after the apocalypse, they'd never run into a psychic child. Would their powers even activate without Azazel's presence? Or had other hunters found them taken care of it? It wasn't the kid's fault, but a lot them had turned into killers.

Suddenly, Dean wished he'd followed up on it a little more. He made a mental note, adding it to the ever growing list of shit they would need to deal with.

"They're not a priority," John insisted, staring at Sam. "We'll deal with 'em after, but right now, we focus on Yellow Eyes. He comes before everything else."

Dean's head twitched slightly at his father's words, at a memory he couldn't grasp, but he knew he'd heard before. It passed as quickly as it came, leaving him with an uneasy feeling, but nothing he could do about it.

"But, Dad, these kids-"

"I told you, we'll deal with them later."

The harsh finality of John Winchester's tone is what finally clued Dean in to the memory flickering at the edges of his mind.

"Deal with them?" He took a step towards his father. His brain was filling with images of those kids who'd never stood a chance, whose deaths had been written for them ten years before they were even born. Andy and Ava. Gordon coming after Sam. His brother sinking to his knees in Colorado, the ghost of a knife sticking out of his back. Even Jake What's-his-name didn't deserve what John Winchester would deal out to him in the name of human justice and protecting the world.

No, life wasn't that black and white anymore. It never had been. And you didn't kill kids for the shit lemons life handed them.

More to the point, what exactly would John decide to do to his own son? Because Dean remembered the last thing John Winchester had said to him. The hunter remembered, vividly, every time his dad told him to take care of Sammy. How John had raised him to take care of his little brother. He remembered each time he'd been yelled at, screamed at, reprimanded and brought down. The disappointment in his dad's eyes. The anger in his voice. That one time when John got too drunk and struck him for letting Sammy run off to a cabin and a friggin' dog. It was always watch Sam, protect Sam. Save Sam.

And the last words Dad ever said to him, telling him to kill the one thing Dean had formed his entire life around. The one person who kept Dean going, no matter how dark it got, no matter how much he hated himself.

To do the one thing John Winchester had raised him to never let happen.

"How exactly are we going to _deal_ with them, Dad? Where do kids with demon blood in them fall on your black and white scale of the world? You gonna deal with Sammy after you've dealt with all of them?"

"Dean!" Bobby barked harshly, warning the kid he was approaching a line. But Dean didn't stop there.

"Let me guess. If you can't _save_ 'em, well, we'll just have to _kill_ 'em, huh? That your grand, master plan?"

"Dean…" Sam sat, shocked, staring at his big brother who had switched, once more, into that cold, hard killer he'd seen a handful of times over the last six months. The man who was probably from the future, who had seen things that had frozen him over, turned him dark and dangerous. This Dean had killed, of that Sam had no doubt. And not monsters, not the things that went bump in the night that needed to be put down. No, this version of his brother had done things a lot darker than try and save the world one monster at a time.

John shoved himself up from his chair, knocking it over in the process as he matched his son's aggressive stance, tension-filled inch for inch. One hand hovered on the gun he kept in the waistline of his pants. Even in Bobby Singer's house, John did not go unarmed. "I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you are not my son."

"Dad," Sam immediately cautioned, eyes darting to the hand wrapped around the butt of a handgun. John Winchester wouldn't really shoot his son, would he?

….He would if he thought Dean was a monster.

Sam swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat and the dryness pervading his entire mouth. Well, he had been asking himself for a week now where he stood on the line between human and other. What his father would do once he learned that information.

Guess he'd just answered his own question.

"No, I'm not your _soldier_ ," Dean barked back, placing his hands on the table with rigid arms and locked elbows. He looked like an animal about to pounce. "I stopped being that man when I realized just how much you lied to us – kept from us. You're right; I'm not the Dean you know. I'm not the good little soldier anymore. But I'm still your son."

The hunter shoved away from the table, green eyes lit with a fire forged by ten years that no one in that room could ever understand. Dean jabbed his finger in Sam's direction. "And so is he, demon blood or not."

Then he marched himself straight out of the kitchen, through the backdoor and into the salvage yard before he could do worse to his dad than just yelling. He left behind a room full of stunned family who had never yet heard the eldest Winchester boy talk to John that way.

Bobby was the first to finally react, clearing his throat in the awkward, tense silence.

"I'll go after the idjit," he mumbled, but his trademark insult lacked the usual fondness and levity it often brought.

Sam and John were silent as Bobby followed the volatile hunter out into the yard. John was still fuming, red in the face and hand gripped tight atop the butt of his gun. Sam didn't think he would exactly be the calming force in any discussion between them, so he chose not to speak. He was still reeling from his brother's words and what they implied. Lucky for him, John stormed off on his own after several aborted steps, one towards the back door, then the den, then the back door again. When he finally left in a huff, it was in the direction opposite of his oldest son.

-o-o-o-

Dean was angry. Angrier than he thought he would be. His dad's death had been hard. Devastating, really. It had changed his entire world and had been the first crack across a soon to be broken man. But none of that compared to having his father tell him – expect him – to do the one thing he just couldn't, _wouldn't_ do.

John should have let him die in that hospital. He should have taken care of Sammy himself rather than ask his oldest, a child he raised with only one purpose, to kill his own brother. To even think that he could do such a thing.

Dean had spent months after John's death angry and desperate and hurting. There was guilt over his father selling his soul to save him, rotting in Hell in exchange for a life Dean had never felt he deserved. There was anger that _those_ were the last words his father found strength to say, that John Winchester had staved off the demon long enough to find his son and pass on a final message. A final message Dean wished to God he'd never heard. He hated himself for it, but he wished John had died before he'd been able to whisper that damning sentence to him. Then came the fury and shame, equal in proportion and destruction, that John thought Dean could ever do it.

It felt like a terrible, unfair test. Killing Sammy hadn't even been an option. Hell, killing himself would have been a thousand times easier. But failing to follow his father's last order, his last warning, was like spitting on the man's grave before his body was even cold.

No matter what he did, he'd already lost.

John should have fucking stayed and finished the job himself. He had no right – _no right_ – to ask that of his own son. No right to offer himself in some noble sacrifice so he could shuck what he couldn't do himself off on Dean.

That thought had ultimately let the anger beat out over the guilt ten years ago.

The thing was, Dean thought he'd gotten over it. It had been nearly a decade since he'd lost his father. He _hadn't_ killed Sam, and sure they'd started the Apocalypse in exchange for it, but hindsight was a bitch. Besides, Dean knew that neither Heaven nor Hell would have let Sam's passing slide by. They needed their Michael Sword in Hell, after all.

But here he was, ten years later, reliving it as he stood outside Singer Salvage Yard, fuming all over again as that guilt and hurt and shame and anger crushed him beneath his father's heel.

He spun and slammed his good hand against the side of an old sedan. He hit the flat of his palm against the metal again and again until that wasn't good enough and he switched to fists. The first hit stung. By the third he couldn't feel his hand anymore. When he started leaving blood splattered across the metal and glass, he finally pulled back.

Having a broken arm and a broken hand and no angel to magically heal him wasn't something he could afford right now. Dean flexed his fingers. The knuckles ached and stung, blood welling up sluggishly, but nothing felt broken. Small favors, he supposed.

"You done beating up my cars, boy?"

Dean didn't have to turn to know Bobby had followed him out. He was hardly surprised. The hunter flicked his wrist several times, dispersing the gathering blood across his knuckles.

"Sorry, Bobby."

"S'not me you gotta apologize to," the older man countered, though there was no heat in his scolding.

"Don't," Dean whispered, head hung. "Just don't."

"Didn't come out here to fight, kid." Bobby uncrossed his arms with a heavy sigh and moved over to the car Dean had unleashed on. He settled against the passenger door, clear of the splattered blood and new dents. "Got enough of that in my house as is."

Dean's shoulders sagged at the added guilt. Bobby didn't deserve all this shoved on him. He'd always been family, and a damn good friend to them. Dean knew he couldn't do this without him, knew cutting him loose to keep him out of the shitstorm to come wasn't an option (the old man would never allow such a thing to happen). But damn, he'd never meant to bring this down on Bobby's house.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled for the second time in a span of minutes.

"Hell, it's hardly your fault, Dean." Bobby cocked his head to the side forgivingly. "We both know you're father's a stubborn SOB. Sam and him are more alike than either of 'em care to admit."

The kid chuckled, but it was a dry and bitter sound. "Yeah. They're both gonna throw themselves in front of this and die fighting it."

Bobby suddenly stilled, shell shock silencing him as if slapped, and Dean immediately realized what he said.

"No, they won't," he quickly corrected, and then had to correct again, "Dad…Dad does."

Which Bobby already knew, but they both were aware of the large gaps missing in the story Dean had told. Bobby could really only hazard at what those gaps were.

Dean cleared his throat. "Sammy will be, uh…"

He took a deep, painful breath as he realized no, no Sammy would not be fine. None of them would be fine. Why did he think he could do this all over again?

"You know the last thing he said to me?"

If the abrupt change of topic was jarring, Bobby didn't let it show. He didn't know John's final words, but he could hazard a guess and it made his stomach twist and his chest ache. "Something to do with saving or killing those kids?"

"Yeah," Dean whispered as he moved over to the car. He settled his chest against the back door, covering the evidence of his outrage. Bowing his head until the cold metal of the car roof met his forehead, he confessed, " _Sam_. His own son."

The old man beside him sucked air through his teeth in a sharp inhale of shock and, worse, pain. It wasn't that that the news was all that surprising given the conversation that had gone down in the house, but it still hurt to think John Winchester could want Sammy dead. Worse, that he asked Dean to do it.

Bobby had always watched John Winchester with an air of distaste and regret when it came to how he raised his boys. The older hunter had tried to be a force of good in their life, a pillar of support and _love_ , in comparison to the military expectations of their demanding father. Even given John's harshness with his boys and his cold distance in raising them, Bobby would never have thought the man could kill one of his boys. Or expect his sons to kill each other. It was wrong on so many levels, and Bobby was beginning to see the edges of this cold, hard Dean in a new light.

He swallowed harshly at the thought that filtered through his mind, guilt immediately flooding him afterward for even thinking it.

 _'Did you?'_

The old man bit his tongue and didn't dare ask. Not only for the damage it would do to Dean, but because he damn well knew Sam lived another ten years, long enough to die in a graveyard fighting God's sister.

How could he even think such a thing? Damn, he was no better than that bastard currently holed up in his house.

"Just the fact that he'd ask me to do that." Dean mumbled the words against the roof of the car when Bobby failed to say anything in response. Silence always had been one of his biggest weaknesses. "That he even thought I could… What- What kind of dad asks his kid to do that?"

Bobby could hear the thickness in the kid's words well enough to know there were tears painting the top of the junker right now. He didn't mention it, just crossed his arms and tilted his head back to stare at the stars.

"Not a very good one," was his gruff reply. He didn't bother hiding his own anger and self-loathing in the statement. "Dean, I know you love him. Realizing your parents got faults – hell, even the _good_ ones – it ain't easy."

And yeah, he was so not thinking of his own drunken bastard of an old man right now.

"But…Family don't end with blood, boy. You got…You boys got more than one daddy. You should know that."

The words trailed off quietly at the end, as if this staunch, grumpy man was almost embarrassed to mutter them. Dean lifted his head off the rusted roof of the car to stare at the hunter that would always be more of a father to him than John Winchester ever would.

He didn't stop to think, knowing he might back out if his brain was given time to admit just how sentimental and touchy this exchange was getting. Instead, he reached out and took what he so desperately needed, pulling Bobby into a crushing hug. He held on far longer than two men hugging ever should, but for one of the few times in his life, he told that voice in his head to shut it and he didn't let go.

When they finally pulled apart, Bobby quirked an eyebrow. Dean sniffed, in a very manly fashion of course, and wiped at his face with his good arm, careful to avoid the sluggishly bleeding cuts across his knuckles.

Bobby, eyebrow still raised, cracked a half smile. "That enough man talk for one evening?"

"God, yes." Dean laughed as he finished making himself semi presentable and the older hunter stood awkwardly by, pretending his boy wasn't falling apart and pulling himself back together. "Thanks, Bobby."

"Anytime, ya idjit." The hunter turned his gaze towards the house, which seemed quiet and almost peaceful in the night, with yellow light filtering out through several windows. "You should tell Sam."

Dean immediately cast a weary look his way.

"You should tell the kid all of it, if ya ask me." Bobby gave a pointed look of his own, knowing Dean was unlikely to follow that advice, even given freely. "But if nothin' else, you should tell him about yer dad."

Green eyes darted away, flickering to the lit windows of the kitchen. Bobby was right. Dean knew he was. With how things were going this time around, he doubted they'd be able to save John Winchester. The man was hell bent as ever to throw himself on the grenade that was the yellow eyed demon.

Even if they managed to avoid all of it – if they kept the Colt away from John, and John away from Azazel. If they kept the demon from possessing their dad, from beating the crap out of Dean, from getting in that car without knowing the truck waiting to ram them off the road. Even if they avoided it all, Dean had a sick feeling in his stomach that it wouldn't be enough.

John was going to keep finding other grenades, it was only a matter of time.

"I don't know," he finally confessed.

"Sam's gonna figure it out, son." At the skewed look Dean sent his way, Bobby just shrugged. "He's not an idiot."

"Yeah, but _time travel_ , Bobby?"

The old hunter shrugged again. Dean should know better than to underestimate his little brother. "I'm just saying. If he finds out after that you knew and didn't tell him…"

"I know," Dean immediately responded, eager to stop thinking about the entire train of thought. "I just…I don't know how much I can tell him."

"Why not all of it?"

The younger hunter just shook his head.

"This got something to do with that dream angel of yers telling you yer changing too much?"

"I don't know, Bobby!" Dean spun away from the house and his kid brother somewhere inside. "Cas wasn't exactly clear on that, you know."

And damn it, he didn't even know if it _was_ Cas.

"What if I change too much?" He glanced back over almost hesitantly at Bobby, and once more the man could see just how lost Dean was in all of this. "What if he's right? If I change too much and the demons start noticing something's up, that I know what's going to happen…"

"Then they go left instead of right," Bobby finished quietly, realization forming more firmly now in the pit of his stomach. He tilted his head back up to the sky once more, ignoring the heavy sigh that settled in his chest like dread.

"Exactly. We lose the only advantage we have here."

Bobby did let that out that sigh, despite it. "Balls."

Dean huffed a laugh, but there wasn't much funny about the situation at all.

-o-o-o-

By the time Dean and Bobby returned to the house, the old hunter eventually grousing at Dean to suck it up and quit hiding out in the yard, John had retired to the couch in the darkened den and Sam was milling about in the room the boys shared upstairs.

The two brothers didn't say much once Dean joined him. Sam had questions but no idea how to frame them, and Dean just wanted to sleep and not think about the weight of the world for a couple of hours.

They turned in with nothing but a quick 'night' to each other.

-o-o-o-

He wasn't sure what woke him, he only knew that one moment he was peacefully asleep and the next he was up and aware that something wasn't right. Sam glanced to his brother's bed. Dean was still out, snoring lightly, good arm thrown over the side of the mattress and broken arm strapped to his chest.

Wetting the roof of his dry mouth, Sam rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he checked the room for whatever had woken him. He stood between the beds, bare feet on cold wood floors. The door to the hallway was partially cracked, but he couldn't remember what state it had been in before collapsing into bed several hours earlier. There weren't any sounds through the house to suggest what woke him up. Still, he knew better than to ignore his instinct. Pulling the hunting knife from under his pillow, he quietly slid out of their shared room and took to the stairs.

The answer came to him at the same time as his feet hit the landing, providing him a glimpse into the den. He'd probably never know if it was his brain or his eyes that supplied the information first, but he supposed it didn't matter. The reason he was awake in the middle of the night was staring him in the face, no longer a mystery.

The couch in Bobby's den was empty, the blanket tossed to the side and John's go bag missing from the floor beside it.

-o-o-o-

When Dean woke to his brother's voice, not urgent in the way that meant they were under attack in the middle of the night but still rushed and definitely angry, the older Winchester already knew. He sat upright as the words spilled out of Sam's mouth, but he already knew.

Dad was gone.

In a flurry of motion, Dean kicked off the sheets and blankets on his bed, moving over to the left of the door where they'd dropped their bags. He rifled through shirts and pants, throwing articles and weapons onto the bed. Sam watched him, knowing what he was looking for and fearing the same thing Dean did.

"It's not here," the older Winchester finally, stoically, reported. Sam closed his eyes. Dean let out a primal, frustrated scream, slamming his hands into the overturned duffle of clothes. "The bastard took the damn Colt!"

-o-o-o-

John Winchester drove sullenly away from the Singer house, fingers tight on the wheel of his truck. The roads were dark, the moon already set for the night and the stars flickering brightly in the velvet sky. There weren't a lot of street lights along the outskirts Bobby where lived. The yellow and white lines of the road were illuminated only by his passing headlights.

The hunter glanced to the passenger seat and the revolver sitting on the old leather.

He'd had to do it. It was the right call, even if stealing from his boys and leaving them in the middle of the night felt low, even for him. But he couldn't let his children get tangled up in this, especially not now. Not with the effects of blood starting to show in his youngest, and his oldest questioning his every command.

John didn't have the extra bandwidth to keep his boys safe, not this time. He needed every ounce of his focus on the demon and the hunt to come.

They wouldn't thank him for it – they never had – but he was going to keep his boys safe.


	26. Season 1: Chapter 25

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Bit of a longer chapter this time as we continue this drawn out hell of brotherly angst, Sam finally gets some things off his chest, and we finally get physical plot advancement along with all this verbal stuff! Oh, and Bobby's awesome. But then again, Bobby's always awesome._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 25

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam was furious. Not with John, not because of their dad stealing the Colt, sneaking off in the middle of the night like some criminal, and once more leaving them behind in a fight they had every right to be in. Sure, he was pissed about all of that, but that was John Winchester. That was predictable. No, Sam was furious and the cause was sitting across from him at Bobby Singer's kitchen table, nursing a beer at four in the morning like he had nothing better to do.

"I can't believe you!" the younger Winchester yelled, tossing his arms to the side. "Dad stole the damn _Colt_ , Dean. He's going after Yellow Eyes and, according to you, it's going to get him dead. We need to go after him!"

Dean spared his brother a rather scathing look, given that Sam was the one clearly making sense here and Dean was the one sitting on his butt doing absolutely nothing. The brunette dropped his arms back to his sides, staring at his brother in disbelief.

Sometimes, he really didn't know this man. If you'd asked him six months ago if his brother would ever change, he'd have laughed the question off because the honest to God answer was no. Winchester men didn't change.

But the cold, broken man sitting in Bobby's kitchen across from him, refusing to save his own father, was so foreign to Sam that he found himself once more questioning if he knew him at all.

"What do you want me to do, Sam?" Dean countered, green eyes refusing to look up at the sasquatch towering over him. "Dad's gonna throw himself at this no matter what we do."

"Then we stop him!"

"It can't be stopped!" Dean leaned forward almost violently, eyes ablaze as he stared at his brother and Sam immediately realized they weren't just talking about John Winchester any more.

He swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. "What's coming that you're so afraid of, Dean?"

His brother shoved back into his chair, once more looking away like a child put in timeout. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Bobby, leaning against the far wall of the kitchen and so far staying out of the sibling spat, cleared his throat and gave the older Winchester a pointed look. Dean ignored him, but Sam bounced his gaze between the two, brow furling.

The realization that Bobby knew hit him like a bag of bricks straight into his stomach, plummeting the vulnerable organ right to the floor and pulling the air from his lungs in the same go. He turned back almost slowly to Dean. He could feel the rage starting to build, not just from their dad and from Dean's refusal to do anything about it, but from the endless lies.

Dean, John, now Bobby. Was he the only person in this family unworthy of the truth?

"Are you going to tell the whole world what's going on with you before you tell _me_?" he shot at his brother. The flinch he got in return only furthered the anger coursing beneath his skin. He could practically feel it vibrating through his veins. It was a building buzz, a tingle through every muscle that reminded him of facing the Baku in that nightmare dream. He felt the swell of pressure through his sinuses before the blood filled his nasal cavity, a steady stream that pooled just above his lip.

Dean was up and out of his chair, the scraping of wood across linoleum suddenly the loudest thing in the tense room. Sam swiped the back of his hand across his face, smearing away the result of what flowed just beneath the surface. He looked back up at his brother, who stood across the table from him, looking more helpless than Sam had ever seen him.

The bitter smile that pulled at his lips was as full of self-loathing as it was anger. Sam held up his hands, the one still smeared with red.

"I'm done." He shook his head and took a step back. "I'm done."

The youngest Winchester spun out of the kitchen, grabbing his jacket off of Bobby's couch as he headed for the front door. Dean was already following, calling after him.

"Where are you going?" he hollered, his concern coming through as abrasive as ever as Sam wrenched open the door.

"I'm going to stop dad or I'm going to help him kill that damn thing. Like _you_ should be doing! " the younger answered automatically, one hand on the knob as he regarded his brother incredulously. He threw his arm out to the side, jacket flapping in the motion. "And after that? I don't know. I just don't know anymore, Dean. Maybe I'll take my life back, go back to school, marry Jess."

The silence that followed his declaration was answer enough as to what Dean thought of that idea. To what the man supposedly from the future knew would never happen. Sam dropped his arms, so damn tired of waiting for his brother to trust him.

"Yellow Eyes said you had to keep hunting," Dean muttered, a lackluster comeback for any Winchester.

Sam scoffed, that bitter smile finding his lips. He turned back through the door, not bothering to face his brother as he called back, "Yeah, but he didn't say it had to be with you."

He left the door open as he jaunted down the steps and across the yard. Dean could close it or follow after, maybe throw a punch or try to stop him. At this point, he really didn't care.

-o-o-o-

Dean watched his kid brother disappear into the stacks of cars, likely to find one still worth hotwiring, since the kid had walked right past the Impala. Sam knew better than to take off in Dean's car, though part of the older hunter might have preferred it. It would have been easier to follow after him, to fight him on this, if he'd given him a reason.

Because Dean knew he didn't have the high ground here. Sam was right, through and through. They should be going after John, stopping him from confronting Azazel, for so many reasons. This hadn't happened last time, so Dean didn't know what would come of it. John could get himself killed sooner, Azazel could get a hold of the Colt, could hold their dad hostage _again_. This wasn't part of the script, and Dean was barely holding on to his escalating blood pressure just thinking about it.

But he was also tired. Tired of fighting for his dad, who seemed as determined as Time itself to make sure he found an early grave. Dean had almost forgotten what it was like trying to talk to John Winchester, the brick wall variety of inflexible. He was tired of doing this alone, tired of lying to his brother, tired of having to police a timeline that had done him no favors, twice over now. And he was terrified for his brother. _Terrified_ , with no idea where to start on fixing it.

"Give him some time," Bobby spoke beside him, the two still staring out the open front door into the yard. Headlights lit the far corner, and soon enough a car pulled onto the drive and headed out the gate.

Dean swallowed hard. "You saw his face, Bobby."

"Yeah, I did." The older hunter's perfectly calm tone was infuriating to the amped up man beside him. "But going after him won't do any good, and you know it. Give him time to cool off. He'll be back."

The older Winchester huffed. "Not if he catches Dad."

Bobby turned back into the house with a roll of his eyes at the kid's pigheadedness. Truth was, Dean was itching for a fight, for someone to vent all that pent up worry on. Bobby wasn't gonna give it to him. "You and I both know he won't. Yer Daddy's got at least a half hour head start. That might as well be a private jet. And Sam knows it."

Dean glanced at his friend before finally heeding him and closing the front door. When he followed Bobby into the kitchen, still glancing back towards the yard, the older hunter rolled his eyes, this time in full view of the intended audience.

"For Christ sake, boy, he wasn't wearing pants." Dean frowned slightly at the older man, who finally gave a hell of a shrug. "He's got all of a jacket and the boxers covering his ass. Pretty sure he'll figure that out about the time he runs out of gas."

Green eyes widened slightly, and the twitch at the corner of his lips told Bobby his job of comforting the damn baby was done. So he plopped himself down in the kitchen chair, reached over to the row of landlines and pulled out the legal pad from that morning. He tossed it onto the table, staring up expectantly at his kid.

"Now sit down and put the time to good use. You got a story to finish, ya idjit, and if I'm not getting sleep in my own house, then neither are you."

-o-o-o-

Sam realized his state of dress and lack of plan long before the gas gage ran low on his hotwired, stolen car. He didn't care. For weeks now, they'd been on the go, non-stop. Between Meg revealing herself to them in California, the Yellow Eyed Demon confronting him – _saving him_ – in Nebraska, and fighting off the Baku, they had barely stopped to breathe or sleep as they crisscrossed the country. Yet, for weeks now, Sam felt stagnant. No closer to finding dad, no closer to ending this nightmare, no closer to getting the truth from his brother.

Even now, with so much of it to a head, it was like running face first into a concrete wall. He now had a pretty good idea what was going on with Dean, but nothing changed. His brother still didn't trust him, believe in him. Dean continued to lie straight to his face. Sam had given him every opportunity to just say it and he was out of reasons – done coming up with excuses – for why Dean couldn't tell him the truth.

They'd finally found their dad, even saved him. _They_ had saved _him_. Their dad, always untouchable, invincible, had needed them and they'd been there. They'd made it, even when he refused to ask for their help. Again, nothing had changed. Sure, they'd had one of the most civil conversations of their relationship to date, but John had still left. He'd still gone behind their backs, refused to trust them to handle themselves as he'd raised them to. Once more, he'd left them behind.

Sam knew he'd never catch him. His dad was too good; the man barely needed a ten minute head start to disappear, and this morning he'd had far longer. They'd wasted precious time arguing about going after him.

The anger resurged, coursing through him almost to a boiling point. He could feel it filling every blood vessel, screaming to be released. To just punch something. To hurt something.

Of everything Dean had done over the past six months, this was the most infuriating of all. Perhaps because it was the least explainable for Sam. It didn't make any sense. Dean had all but said their dad was going to get himself killed, and Sam had less and less doubt about its validity. Yet his brother refused to go after him, to stop him?

Why? Was Dean Winchester really going to just let their dad die? Not for the first time, Sam wondered if he really knew this man that had taken over his brother's body and turned his life so utterly upside down.

Worse, he'd kept Sam from going after Dad while he could have made a difference. He could have caught him – could have at least had a chance – if he'd left right away. Now, he was out driving the darkened backroads of South Dakota for no reason. His 'search' was pointless, accept that it got him out of that house and away from his brother.

If it even was his brother anymore.

The boiling in his blood reached the tipping point, fed by the pain that lanced through him at the thought he couldn't take back. With a recklessness that could have gotten him killed, Sam wrench the car off to the shoulder, slamming on the breaks. He was out the door before the parking break fully engaged, pacing along the dirt and weeds that lined the backroad.

He could feel it building in him like a pressure gage. Like a shaken soda, and his brother was the damn bottle cap. With trembling fists, Sam spun back towards the car and let out a primal scream. Metal wrenched and screeched in tune with his cry. He threw out his hand and the driver door flew across the road with a shriek, clattering across the cement to careen into ditch on the other side.

It wasn't enough, though. He could still feel the bubbling in his blood, the anger coursing through him that needed release. So he tore at the car again and again; he ripped at the doors and dented the roof. He exploded windows and crushed the interior. When the airbag blew, he ripped that out a well, sending it off into the field along the highway with nothing more than his mind and his rage.

As the anger finally petered out and his adrenaline crashed into a hollow, empty pit in his chest, Sam sank onto the side of the road. Blood was flowing freely from his nose and his lungs were heaving, desperate for air that suddenly seemed in short supply.

The young hunter sat on his heels, gasping in the middle of the dark road, vision blurred by stinging eyes. He wipe the back of his hand across his face, erasing evidence of snot and tears and spit. When breathing became more manageable and his hands weren't shaking so badly he couldn't even grip his jacket, Sam looked back up. He stood in one fluid motion, brought to his feet by sudden shock of what he had done.

The car was unrecognizable. There was nothing left but a wrecked, mangled pile of metal that looked closer to a mechanical pancake than a vehicle. A shaky breath left him as realization hit tenfold and he lifted his fingers to his upper lip, caked with blood.

He'd done that. With his mind.

Sam stumbled back a step, staring in horror at the direct result of his loss of control and the new power flowing beneath his fingertips. His hands were shaking again. He swiped again at his nose, and then again and again in a desperate bid to rid himself of the proof. He spun away from the flattened car, pinching his nose until the flow finally slowed.

Was this what Yellow Eyes wanted? Was this why he had saved him, given him that blood? Sam stared at his hands, shaking and smeared with patches of red so dark in the early hours that the liquid almost looked black. The boy curled his fingers into loose fists, hiding them too.

"What am I?" he whispered to the empty road, as terrified of a response as he was of the silence he got in return. He tilted his head back to the heavens and screamed it to the sky. Maybe if he yelled it loudly enough, someone would answer him.

Was this why Dean sometimes looked at him like he was terrified for him – or maybe it was of him? Was that car and the blood on his hands the reason Dean wouldn't tell him the truth? Didn't trust him?

He glanced over his shoulder almost hesitantly at the vehicle as though it might come to life; the embodiment of his fear and uncontrollable rage. Maybe Dean wasn't the one in the wrong here, he thought. Because staring at that mangled, broken mess of thankfully lifeless material, Sam was no longer sure he trusted himself.

He hung his head in the silence that surrounded him. The wheat stalks rustled in the light breeze and the moon hung low in the sky, on its way back down for the day. Any other time, he would have called it peaceful. He would have called Jess, despite the early hour, and told her about the stars in the sky and the crickets on the wind.

Sam sniffed once, blinking away the water build up in his eyes and pulling the jacket tight around himself. A million would-haves wasn't going to change things, and he had a long walk ahead of him. He started past the car, back the way he'd come, but hesitated as his booted feet crunched on asphalt.

Hesitantly, he glanced at the metal wreck. He couldn't just leave it there. A gutted car that looked like it had gone through a compactor in the middle of nowhere Nebraska? Yeah, that was going to call some attention. Quite possibly of the hunter variety.

Sam stared at the chunk of metal and the corn field behind it, stomach twisting. Slowly, he raised one hand, fingers splayed. His entire arm trembled as he stared at the metal between his fingers. Nothing happened for several long moments. He knew, with no idea how he knew, that it was his fear holding him back.

With a deep swallow, he shoved that twisting knot in his gut down deeper, out of the way where he couldn't feel its hesitancy. He closed his eyes and concentrated, searching for that ever present vibration in his blood. And then he pushed.

The car screeched across the road terribly, sparks jutting up in its wake. It rocked and dragged at first, then went flying into the field beyond like a saucer from space. Sam released the power shuddering through his body as soon as the car was hidden among the stalks. He stumbled on the road, but managed to keep his feet and immediately checked his nose.

No blood.

He stared down at his hand, having no idea what that meant. He turned heel on the long road and started back the way he'd come, refusing to look at the field that hid the evidence of his very terrifying new ability.

-o-o-o-

"We have a problem."

Lilith looked up from the ancient scroll she was tracing a petite finger across, deciphering ink long faded by years on earth and now all but deteriorating in the heat and depths of Hell. But Azazel's tone booked little room for pause, so with a toss of black hair and pink ribbons, she sent the attending demons from the room and set aside the parchment detailing the creation of six hundred and sixty six seals.

Once he had her full attention and the promise of a private audience, Azazel tilted his head towards the demonic princess. "John Winchester has the Colt."

Any lingering sweetness painted across her pink cheeks by youth or innocence disappeared in a snarl far more reminiscent of her true face. Her eyes flashed pupil-less white, tinted red and orange by the ever flickering flames of Hell. "What? We've been searching for that wretched thing for decades! How the hell did that useless meatsuit _stumble_ across it?"

Azazel paid her reverberating wrath little mind. He was the one who had neglected to mention the Winchester's primary means of negotiation six months prior, when they played their hand early to save one bitch out of thousands. The Prince of Hell had let that piece of information slide precisely for this reason. He had witnessed his fair share of temper tantrums by Lucifer's firstborn in the two decades since he'd managed to unearth her from the depths of the Pit. They still hadn't gotten her topside – that would take a Devil's Gate and no less. A demon of her age and power drew the denizens of hell behind her like flotsam caught in a wake. They'd plug up any hole they tried to squeeze her through well before she got close.

Luckily, they'd worked that into their plans long ago, and fate seemed only to be shining on them.

"It's in our favor, really," he offered, crossing his arms and leaning one shoulder against the rocky wall, the uneven surface sweltering hot as all things in the Pit were. "Without it, we were going to have to open one of the more troublesome gates. Now we can go straight for Cavalry Cemetery."

"Assuming we can get our hands on the Colt," she bit back.

He was surprised at her pessimism, really. Of all the head demons in on Hell's apocalypse plan, Lilith had maintained a steadfast and loyal optimism not common among their kind. But here she stood, worrying her lip between her baby teeth at the first real obstacle they'd hit, which they hadn't bothered ruling out as a possibility to begin with, and one that really would serve them better in the end.

"Do you think it could kill him?"

Ah, so she was worried about dear Daddy. Azazel shrugged. "I don't know. But it certainly can kill me or you, and ahead of schedule I might add. That's a bigger concern then hypotheticals."

Her eyes darted to the parchment, then back to him. She drew her shoulders back and thrust her chin out, which might have been cute on an actual eight-year old girl. "I want that gun, Azazel. It's time to take John Winchester."

Her command left no room for argument, though Azazel had none to give anyway. Heaven's gate remained shut and quiet. The Winchesters were falling into line without knowledge of their complicity. The appearance of the Colt was the final sign Azazel had been waiting for. It was time to get the wheels of Hell's apocalypse really turning.

-o-o-o-

The legal pad was almost full by the time the sun started its way back down, and that was only the apocalypse-based stuff. Dean still refused to bring up anything after, insisting that they wouldn't get there and if they did that he'd already written it down. He ignored Bobby's repeated looks at that point, and now stood at the back door, staring out into the yard.

"He'll come back, son. Give it time."

Dean shot a half-hearted glare over his shoulder at the old hunter, sitting at the table, going back through the endless notes he'd written that day. He'd been asking questions every couple of minutes, any time he hit a part he felt didn't have enough information.

Dredging all of that up and then being quizzed on it was only making Dean twitchier.

"It's been all damn day, Bobby."

The old man huffed, not even bothering to look up. "Your brother's a grown ass man, Dean. He can check himself into a hotel. Tell me about the Harvelles."

Dean's stomach clenched at the request. Bobby was slowly tracking through eight years of crap, systematically but methodically identifying each area Dean had neglected to define in detail. He'd pretty much glossed right over Ellen and Jo. Their deaths still rubbed his heart raw in ways that had never healed right.

When the kid didn't answer, Bobby sighed and let the pages of the legal pad fall back into place, covering five years of unpleasant memories. He watched his son stare out the window with a singular focus and decided to take pity on the kid.

"You know something about today?"

Dean glanced over at him with a frown, not understanding his question at first. When he realized what Bobby was asking him, he shrugged. "No. None of this happened the first time."

"Date doesn't ring any bells?"

The hunter paused to think for a moment, then looked over sheepishly. "What's the date?"

Bobby rolled his eyes hard enough he should have gotten whiplash. "May first, you idjit. Two thousand six."

Dean shook his head. He didn't recall anything happening on that date specifically, though there honestly weren't that many events he remembered down to the detail of the day.

"Then give him some space. He'll come back."

The kid grumbled by the window, eyes still looking back through the blinds to the empty yard beyond. Bobby had just gone back to the legal pad when he finally turned into the room. "What if he catches up to Dad? He's going to get himself killed, Bobby, and if Sammy's with him…If Azrael gets him early… God, we've already got the blood addiction to worry about-"

"Calm down," Bobby answered immediately, notepad falling to the side once more. "Getting your tights in a twist ain't gonna fix anything. Sam's a smart kid; he'll be back. But he ain't gonna stay if you keep lying to him, and you know it."

Dean shot him a glare, which he promptly ignored. But movement out the back window caught his attention, and he turned to see a lone figure making his way toward the house. Immediately, Dean pushed open the door with his good arm, jogging down the stairs as Sam came walking up in nothing but his boxers, a pair of dusty boots, and a jacket.

"What happened to the car?" Dean glanced around the yard, wondering briefly why Sam was walking the length of the drive. He hadn't actually figured Sam would run out of the gas. The kid was too smart for that. "Wait, did you _walk_ here?"

His brother spared him a heated glare and pushed right past him back into the house. He gave a brief greeting to Bobby, which was returned in kind, and then headed straight upstairs for a pair of much needed pants.

Letting the door close behind him, Dean watched his brother disappear into the den and the stairs beyond, glancing at Bobby helplessly. The old hunter just guffawed and gave him a 'told ya so' look before going back to his legal pad.

With an eye roll of his own, totally done with being the bad guy here, Dean stomped after Sam. He took the stairs one angry footfall at a time, giving his brother plenty of warning he was coming with all the noise he was making. Sam was just buttoning his jeans and grabbing a clean shirt when Dean opened the door to the room they shared.

"You gonna talk to me, or we just doing the silent thing now?"

Sam paused for half a second before he resumed pulling the shirt on over his head. He let his brother stew in his lack of answer as he pulled the hem down, then reached for his jacket. By the time he'd gotten it on, Dean looked ready to blow. So Sam finally faced him, a mask of nonchalance covering his own anger. "Do you ever get tired of being a damn hypocrite?"

Dean pulled back. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means Kettle," Sam gestured to his brother, then to himself. "Pot. You want to talk silent treatment?"

His older brother had the brains to at least move to the side as Sam pushed past him and into the hall. Those brains didn't stop him from following after him, though.

"What the hell, Sam. Since when am I giving you the silent treatment? Pretty sure this is me talking to you."

Sam snorted as he started down the stairs. He swiped his phone and wallet off of Bobby's desk, where he'd left them the night before. He turned around to face his brother, shoving the items into his jacket pocket. "Talking to me? Dean, you haven't _talked_ to me in six months. And I'm done. I'm headed right back out that door after dad or the first hunt I can find unless you start telling me the truth."

Dean hesitated, eyes sliding just over his brother's shoulder, where Bobby was still sitting in the kitchen, watching the confrontation unfold with a pointed look.

Sam shook his head once more. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Dangerous. "I'm not kidding, Dean. This is your last chance. I'm your _brother_. If that means anything to you, then _talk_ to me."

The older Winchester opened his mouth, only to have nothing come out. He tried again, but damn it, how was he supposed to even start?

Sam dropped his gaze, jaw clenched. He gave a nod and turned toward the kitchen and the back door.

"I don't know how to," Dean blurted out almost desperately. When Sam turned halfway back to him, he shrugged helplessly. "I don't know where to start."

"You're from the future."

Whatever he had been expecting from his brother – and honestly, he'd been expecting that soft, victim-voice and puppy dog eyes to help walk him through this – it wasn't that. The words were biting and fierce, and Sam's eyes dared him to say otherwise.

Dean's mouth flapped like a fish and Bobby coughed harshly in the kitchen, likely covering up the fact that he'd practically snorted his beer. Sam spared him a glance, but quickly refocused his attention on his floundering brother.

The younger Winchester, shoulders heaving with each tension-filled, super-charged breath, couldn't believe how easy it had been. Almost three days of trying to figure out how to broach the subject, since his brother clearly wasn't going to, and it had come down to blurting it out. He was actually more annoyed that he'd wasted those days trying to approach the problem like a referee. Like Sam Winchester would. He should have just approached it like Dean.

He squared his shoulders and stared down at his older brother, whose expression erased the last little bit of doubt in Sam's mind that he could have been wrong. "How about you start there."

The man from the future gaped for another moment before he shook his head. "How the hell-"

"Because I'm not an idiot, Dean." Sam turned and walked swiftly into the kitchen, his brother hot on his heels. He needed motion – action – and quite possibly a drink if he was staying in this house.

"Oh no," Dean countered, following Sam straight over to the fridge. "You don't get to drop that bombshell and call IQ points, college boy. Smart people don't jump straight to _time travel_!"

Sam whirled on his brother, beer in hand and fridge door open. "You look about a decade older in dreamland, _future boy_."

Dean was back to floundering, mouth hanging open and snapping shut in a cycle. Finally, with a glance at Bobby who was busy trying out for the Olympic sport of eye rolling and told-ya-so's, the older Winchester cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Oh," he managed, wetting his lips at his suddenly dry mouth. He swiped the beer from his brother's hand, but at least had the decency to look sheepish for all of it. "I hadn't thought of that."

Sam glared at him, but reached in for another beer.

-o-o-o-

The confrontation between the brothers when it finally came to a head was no less tense than Bobby figured it would be. It wasn't quite as volatile as he'd feared, considering Dean was still flabbergasted his brother had figured it out and Sam was far calmer about the confirmation then Bobby thought was normal.

It was still ugly, though.

"What the hell was I supposed to tell you, huh?" Dean popped the cap off the beer with one hand, using the edge of the counter. "Hi, Sam, I'm your brother from ten years in the future. An angel sent me back because serious shit is coming?"

"Anything would have been better than lying to me, Dean!" Sam threw himself into one of the kitchen chairs, and then almost as quickly launched himself back out of it. The wild energy built up in him was clear as day, and Dean at least had the intelligence to stay out of its path. "You're not subtle. I spent the last six months wondering who the hell you were half the time, and the other wondering why you didn't trust me!"

"I do trust you." The words were so quickly state, with such veracity, that it drew Sam up short. He stared at his brother, who was watching him with as earnest as those green eyes ever got. "I trust you, Sam, more than anyone else on this planet."

Dean swallowed, looking away self-consciously, shame flickering at the edges of his gaze. "This wasn't about trust."

"Then what, Dean?" Sam stared at his brother imploringly. "Make me understand. I'm your brother; you should be able to tell me anything."

The older Winchester shrugged his good shoulder, fingers immediately picking at the label of his beer. Sam knew it well for the tell of insecurity it was. "I don't exactly have a manual here, alright? I'm winging it, and I've…I've gotten a lot wrong."

Sam's brow furled. "In…time travel?"

Dean shrugged again, glancing back up. "I'm trying to change things, Sammy. And so far I've mostly just fucked them up."

"That's not true," Bobby groused from the side. Both boys turned to him, having forgotten he was in the room as an audience to their spat. He had the pad of scribbles in front of him, not bothering to hide it, and was pointing the pen in Dean's direction. "You've done good too, kid. You know that."

Dean ducked his gaze away again. Looking at his brother and his anger and confusion was easier than Bobby and his praise. "Point is, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how much I can tell you, how much I can change without, you know, breaking the friggin' or universe or something."

"Anything is better than you lying to me, man." Sam stood in the doorway of the kitchen, slouched for all his height. Dean sighed and rubbed the back of his head, seeing only his kid brother standing there.

"I know," he conceded softly. "I know, Sam. And I didn't want to lie to you. I've been trying not to, alright, ever since-"

He cut himself off automatically, six months of instinct and rehearsal shutting down that line of thought as soon as it registered as 'future knowledge.' The idea of sharing it now, of uttering it without care, was both terrifying and desperately freeing.

"Since what?"

"Since I promised you – future you – no more secrets," Dean confessed, taking the plunge. It left him in one fast, long exhale, like a breath he'd been holding too long, till his lungs burned with the need to let it out. "Shit, man. Maybe that promise is ten years from now, but damn it, I was _trying_. You'd think _time travel_ would be some sort of exception, but I still felt like crap every time."

"What about now?" Sam held open his arms, beer in one hand and too many expectations in the other. "I know now, Dean, and you didn't even tell me. I figured it out, so the universe can…suck it."

His older brother huffed out a laugh, but it settled in an awkward silence as he hesitated once more.

Sam dropped his arms. "Seriously?"

"It's got nothing to do with you, Sammy," Dean growled, rubbing the back of his head again. "I don't know what's safe to tell you. I had a friggin' panic attack the first time I even tried."

The younger of the two recalled a time not long after Dean had changed that he'd been an anxious, tongue-tied mess. Sam had been scarily close to calling Bobby or a head doctor. So that seemed a likely contender for what his brother was referencing.

"Did you hold back with Bobby?" He glanced back at the kitchen table and the thick pad of paper, curling at the edges and full of the older hunter's scrawl. "Because those pages look pretty full to me."

"Bobby's different."

Sam had to bite down on the instant surge of annoyance and hurt called up by his brother's words. Instead, he reminded himself that Dean Winchester had never been good with them and ignored the slight buzz throughout his veins. "How? You mean he's not your _kid_ brother."

"That's not what I said."

"Kind of sounding like it, Dean."

"None of Bobby's decisions are going to start the Apocalypse!"

Dead silence filled the entirety of the Singer house. Sam was staring at his brother with wide eyes, barely able to breathe through suddenly constricted lungs. Dean stood across from him, looking like he wanted to shove his foot in his mouth and then swallow himself whole. At the kitchen table, Bobby made a disgruntled noise, planting his forehead in his palm.

"What?"

The whispered word was hardly a breath and Dean sighed, head hung.

"Bobby doesn't have as many choices coming up – important ones – that are going to have world-ending consequences."

"Yeah, I know the definition of an apocalypse, Dean. How about you cover the part of me starting one."

"It's not just you," Dean mumbled, raising his eyes to meet his brother's with more pain than Sam was comfortable seeing in them. "We both got starring roles to play in this, Sammy."

The younger Winchester took a shuttering breath in, heavy realization settling in his gut that Dean was serious. Not that this as a joke had even occurred to him, but it was natural for his brain to automatically flip the 'false' switch at anyone casually dropping the apocalypse as an upcoming calendar event.

"How…" He swallowed heavily, eyes darting around the room and back again. "Dean, how am I supposed to make the right choice if I don't even know the context of my options!"

"I'll help you."

The answer came so easily, so readily, off lips that had said those words a thousand times to him. Words that were formed in aid, but yielded control. Words he'd learned from their father, however well intended either Winchester man had meant to be.

"No, you mean you'll make the decision _for me_ ," Sam countered sharply as the buzz beneath his skin returned. It was nothing more than a slight vibration, but he was learning to tune into it faster now. "Helping me would mean telling me the truth and trusting me to make the right call!"

Bobby speared the older of the two brothers with a look that Dean couldn't duck, but could avoid returning.

"Sammy-"

"No, Dean! You can't just take my choices away from me because something's coming, because of decisions I haven't even made yet and things I haven't done." Sam scoffed, turning away from his brother. He rolled tight, aching shoulders, snapping his neck to the side as tension rippled up his spine. "I should have known better. This family. If I don't fit the mold, you'll just force me into it, won't you? You, Dad, the Yellow Eyed Demon. God forbid I make my own choices! To hell with the road I want to take, right?"

Sam was good and rearing, lungs filled and ready for verse two. Dean was already raising a finger, mouth open to beat him back down. He hardly noticed the building migraine, flaring with every word he spewed, or the way the edges of his vision darkened as he spun back to face his brother.

Dean barely caught the six and a half feet of Samsquatch before he hit the floor, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

"Sam! Sammy!"

Bobby was up and out of his chair in a second flat, squatting down on the other side of the brothers. Sam hissed in Dean's good arm and the older Winchester struggled not to lose his hold on him as he tossed his head back and forth. He squinted past them with unseeing eyes, face pinched in pain as he tried to reach for his temple, entangling his arms with his brother's.

"What's happening?" Bobby asked, hands held out to help and assess, but with no idea what to do.

"I think it's a vision," Dean answered. Sam had only had one or two in front of him in the past, and he was pretty sure he hadn't hit the deck during any of those. Mid-rant, it was unlikely he'd been trying to push himself to have one again, like he had back in Wyoming before the whole blood debacle.

But with a pint of demon blood in his veins…Dean hadn't seen fallout from that yet, but he didn't think for a second that it meant they were out of the woods.

"Sammy?"

His kid brother finally stilled against him, fingers finding purchase against his temple and pressing into the headache he was sure to be feeling. Sam managed to open his eyes to slivers, staring up at his brother and Bobby. He groaned as he realized what had happened, struggling to sit and getting fully upright with his brother's help.

"What did you see?" Dean asked, keeping his hand placed supportively on his brother's back. "Was it Dad?"

"No." Sam shook his head, wincing as he did so and prompting Bobby to climb to his feet and head for the fridge and the ice pack he kept there. Sam accepted it and the hand towel gratefully, wrapping the cotton around the cold before pressing it to his aching head. "It was some guy in his garage. I think…he committed suicide, only it wasn't him. The car turned on by itself – wouldn't turn off – and the garage door wouldn't open. He couldn't get out."

Bobby watched the kid worriedly. He'd yet to see one of these visions, and if they were all doozies like that one, he was rather glad he hadn't. "Sounds like a ghost."

No, Dean thought. But it did sound familiar.

"There was something else-" Sam shook his head slightly, squinting once more as he tried to recall what he'd seen. "A kid. I don't know, the son, maybe? He was watching from the house."

Bobby stilled beside them, face tightening in thought. When Dean called his name, he glanced between the boys and then stood, beckoning them to his desk. Sam grabbed his brother's offered hand, pulling himself to his feet with a pained groan. He kept the ice pressed to his temple as the three men gathered around Bobby's desk, the old hunter pulling maps and sheets of paper from one of the drawers.

Files hit the surface in stacks, spreading out as paper slid over the smooth surface. Each stack was paper clipped together and topped with a photo of various kids. There had to be a dozen of them at least, smiling faces of teenagers and college kids. Some of which Dean recognized.

He looked up, meeting Bobby's eyes with surprise.

"What? You think John Winchester is the only one who can put together a pattern?"

Dean looked back down at the spread of Azazel's special children. Damn, Bobby was awesome.

"Any of 'em look familiar, Sam?"

The younger of the Winchesters pushed loose the few files that had remained stacked, hand hovering just above each photo, before settling on one. "Him. He was the one I saw."

Bobby pulled the stack out from under Sam's hand, flipping it open. Dean caught the familiar face staring up from the front page as it flopped over.

"Max Miller," the older hunter began reading. "Twenty-three years old, lives at home with his father and step-mother in Saginaw, Michigan. Birth mother died in a house fire when he was six months old."

"Do you think he's like me?"

"No," Dean responded hollowly, still staring at that ghost of a boy. He looked up to meet Sam and Bobby's eyes, respectively. "He doesn't get visions. He's, uh…telekinetic."

Sam stared at him, clearly boggled, though from the confirmation of other children with powers or a boy with the ability to move things with his mind, Dean didn't know. Or possibly his older brother finally admitting to knowing things he shouldn't 'cuz of that whole future thing, and all.

He cleared his throat when the wide-eyed staring didn't stop. "I, uh, don't remember much. I think he iced his parents. Abusive, or something. We thought it was a ghost when we first showed up."

"Telekinetic?" Sam still seemed a little shell-shocked.

"Yeah. All of you have different…abilities."

His kid brother took in a shuttering breath, eyelids fluttering for a moment and finally breaking that hundred-yard stare. "So there are more of us?"

"Yeah… Yeah, a lot more." Dean's words trailed off as he tried to dig through his memories for the confrontation with Max Miller. The kid had killed his dad in the garage, that much he remembered from Sam's vision. But there had been something else, too. He'd gone after his stepmom with a gun? A levitating gun. Dean's levitating gun.

"We gotta go," the older Winchester announced, turning around in the den in search of his jacket and car keys.

"What?"

"The dad died before we got there last time. We gotta go if we're going to save him." The image of Max lying in a pool of blood, bullet to the brain, was suddenly sharp in his mind. "If we're going to save Max."

"Dean." His brother's warning voice drew him up short. He could tell from the sasquatch's body language that he was a moment away from grabbing his own go bag and hitting the road, so it wasn't the sudden departure causing that tone. Meeting Sam's eyes, he could see the unfinished conversation plain as day in those hazel rings.

"I'll…I'll tell you what I can on the road. I promise," he intoned seriously, even as his chest constricted at the idea of fulfilling that vow.

Sam shared a skeptical look with Bobby, but grabbed Max's file from his hand and headed after his brother to confront the first of the Yellow Eyed Demon's other children.


	27. Season 1: Chapter 26

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Dean's got the usual potty mouth, Sam's on a roller-coaster ride of emotions, and Max Miller isn't buying the FBI Agents there to save the day._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 26

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The car shook as the driver side door shut, Dean climbing into the Impala next to his brother. The key hadn't even turned in the ignition before Sam was on him.

"So talk."

Dean sighed. "It's only a day's drive to Saginaw."

Sam's brow furled, not following his brother's train of thought. "So? What's that got to do with anything?"

Dean put the car in reverse and backed away from Bobby's house. Baby hadn't been moved since they'd first arrived in their frantic search for John, since Bobby insisted he drive them to the hospital for Dean's broken arm that night, and the younger hunter hadn't exactly cared about a good parking job when they'd gotten there earlier that day. He flipped gears and pulled onto the partially designated drive, differentiated only by the lack of junkers on the clear stretch of gravel and dirt.

"It's not long enough. Not for the whole story, trust me."

"So I get nothing?" Sam huffed, a disbelieving look painted across his bitter smile and raised eyebrows. "We're going to spend the next twelve hours pretending you're _not_ from the future? Oh, yeah, that's going to be a fun ride."

Dean wrung his hand on the steering wheel as he pulled onto the interstate. The conversation was inevitable and he knew it. "What do you want to know?"

Sam turned his head to look at his older brother, who kept his eyes firmly on the road. "What does Yellow Eyes want?"

"Azazel." Dean cleared his throat. He rubbed his broken arm against his sternum and the light ache there. "His name's Azazel."

His kid brother stared at him, brow creased and roiling emotions too masked by the gravity of the situation for Dean to read him easily.

"What does Azazel want with me?"

-o-o-o-

Sam was numb.

He thought he shouldn't be. He should probably be freaking out. Stressed. Emotional. Stunned. Any of that would be a proper reaction to learning _you_ were going to herald the end of the world. Sam Winchester, boy with the demon blood, destined freer of Lucifer and vessel of the actual devil.

The young hunter let out a low, slow breath through pursed lips.

They were at a gas station just outside of Rochester, Minnesota. Dean was by the pump, leaning against the side of the Impala as he filled her up. Sam could tell from his posture, going from rigid to forcefully relaxed and back again, that he was trying to give his brother space but didn't want to leave his sight either.

Sam didn't pay him much attention. Sitting in the front seat, he was busy being numb. Not the tingling numb of a limb falling asleep, but the floating sensation of no longer having any ties to the world or the laws that defined it. There was no gravity afflicting his body, pushing his limbs into the old leather of the seats, the rough fabric of his clothes. There was no scent of coffee wafting up from the cup holders or faded music filtering from the broken speakers of the gas station roof. None of that was real – couldn't be – because Sam didn't feel any of it.

He needed to call Jess. It was the only thought that kept going through his head. Everything Dean had told him, from Azazel's plan for him, to defeating the Devil, and all he could think about was calling Jess. She deserved to know he wasn't coming back.

Sam pushed open the passenger door with the squeak of metal. Dean looked up from the pump, across the roof of the car. His face was full of brotherly concern – the stern type that was about to ask him where he was going. Sam turned away before he could, heading for the small store attached to the pumps.

Dean didn't call after him and he was glad for it.

The young hunter didn't duck around the corner of the dilapidated building like he wanted to. His brother would absolutely put him back in line of sight the moment he was out of it, even if he stayed far enough away to give him some privacy. So Sam didn't waste energy trying for it. Instead, he leaned against the edge of the convenience store, as far from the entrance and close to the side of the building as he could go while still remaining in his brother's vision.

Pulling out his phone, he turned his shoulder to the car and raised the mobile to his ear.

Dean had been emphatic that what happened next – what they were going to change so it never came – wasn't his to face alone. Yes, he was supposed to release the devil on the world and serve as his physical presence. Yes, in the world Dean came from, it had happened. But his brother insisted that he'd also been the one to stop Lucifer, to cage him back up at the cost of his own life. Dean had played his own role as well, breaking the first seal as unwittingly as Sam had broken the last. Though he had skirted details due to what he claimed were time constraints (but Sam easily read as bitter memories and avoidance), he'd made it clear that the two were pawns – weapons – in a war between Heaven and Hell.

So they were going to throw the rule book out. Screw destiny. Go Team Free Will. They'd done it once before, and this time they had the edge of knowing what was coming. They wouldn't be tricked into that fate crap again.

Sam's fingers tightened around the edge of the phone as it rang. See, there was a problem with that plan that Dean didn't know about. Sam _believed_ in Fate. In Destiny. The idea that he was meant for something more, something better than hunting, had gotten him through his dark childhood of shotguns and shovels. Sam believed in God and he believed in a plan, because it had been one of the rare lights in the long nights of his youth that he _could_ believe in.

Now Dean was insisting both sides, Heaven and Hell, were dicks and God was a no-show; a deadbeat dad with nothing but excuses and silence. There was no good side in the upcoming war but their own. The oorah-comradery was his brother's attempt at following up some terrible news with a ray of hope, but it did nothing for Sam's numb state. He could feel the taint of demon blood slithering beneath his skin and he knew, as painful as it was to admit it, that he wasn't on the side of good.

"Sam?"

The Winchester boy sucked in a breath at the sound of Jess's voice through the phone. Just hearing her used to bring a smile to his face. He knew, given other circumstances, it absolutely still would. But not tonight. He looked down at the sidewalk beneath his feet, spattered with chewed gum and cigarette butts, illuminated by the flickering gas station lights above

"Hey, Jess." His return was lackluster, despite giving it half a thought of forcing a smile to his face. It would be misplaced and unfair to her now, especially with what he learned. He didn't have it in him to fake that kind of happiness.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, it's…nothing immediate." He shook his head and pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment. Sam tilted his head back and closed his eyes, praying to someone who his brother insisted wasn't listening.

And he would know, wouldn't he?

"Sam? Talk to me." Jess's voice was sweet as he put the phone back to his ear. She was worried for him, her words dipped with concern and a love that Sam knew now he didn't deserve. "Is it your dad? Did you find him?"

"Yeah. He's…" A bastard, that's what John Winchester was. "…fine. We're uh…we found him, but he left again."

"What an asshole." Her response, immediate and without remorse, made him chuckle. God, he missed her. Silence filled the line for a moment, and he could almost picture her if he closed his eyes. Thin but strong fingers tightening around the phone, blonde waves pressing against her cheek from the weight of the phone, worry in her eyes and bottom teeth abusing the corner of her lip.

"I'm okay, Jess," he said quietly, trying to reassure her as he realized that these calls did nothing but bring her more pain. That's all he seemed capable of bringing his loved ones right now. And for the foreseeable future. That's why he had to let her go. Why she had to let him go. "I…I learned some things. We found out the demon's plan."

"That's….that's good, right?" He could tell from her tone that she knew it wasn't good. "Better than not knowing…"

"Yeah. But…uh…it's not…" Sam opened his eyes, staring at the edge of the gas station property, marked by an old wooden fence. Dozens had left their mark on that fence, from stains of shattered beer bottles to graffiti gang symbols, tags, and one beautiful mural of a weeping Native American woman. "It's not going to end anytime soon, Jess."

She didn't answer right away, and he knew she was pursing her lips on the other end of the line. The truth was, they'd both known that was the most likely outcome. They'd clung onto each other and their love out of a hope that this could end, that they could be together. But Sam knew it had been unlikely, and each time he talked with Jess he realized she knew it too.

"Okay," she answered softly. "It's okay, Sam. We'll get through this."

"No," he shook his head. "No. I…I want you to…You shouldn't... Don't wait for me Jess."

He tried not to say it, to telegraph it, but the unvoiced _I'm not coming back_ was audible all the same. There was a muffled sound down the line, and he knew she was crying and trying not to.

"Don't make this a goodbye, Sam." Her words were fierce and full of fire, even as the tears surely trekked down her beautiful face. "This is _not_ goodbye. We'll…We'll take a break, yeah? But I'll be here. I will be _right here_ , Sam."

There were tears building in his own eyes now, and he rolled his gaze skyward once more, trying to blink them away.

"I don't want you to wait, Jess."

"I won't. I won't put my life on hold for you, Sam Winchester." Her tone, broken with the half laugh she forced out, belied any harshness to her words and it made him smile through watery vision of his own. "I find one of those cute pre-meds back at school and I'm gone."

Sam choked out a laugh. He could hear her smile through her tears, even as her voice softened and her words turned sincere. "Just because I'm not with you doesn't mean I'm not here. I will never stop loving you Sam. And I will always be here for you."

He bowed his head, water flowing freely down his face and hitting the cement below. He did not deserve this woman.

"So you will call me when you need me. You hear me, Sam?"

He sniffed but laughed, and she joined him in their bittersweet love. "I hear you."

The rumble of an engine caught his attention, and he glanced over his shoulder. Dean had climbed into the Impala and was pulling away from the pump, maneuvering the muscle car to an empty parking spot across the gas station. The car idled for a second, then shut off and Dean didn't climb out.

Sam knew what his brother was offering without words, so he turned back to his phone and asked Jess how her first term back at Stanford was going.

-o-o-o-

Dean didn't ask about Jess when Sam climbed back into the car, but the younger man knew he wanted to. He thought about offering up the information, but he was tired. Tired of playing mediator between himself and his brother when the wrongs lay mostly in Dean's court. Tired of this game, this hunt that never seemed to end. He felt weary down to his bones, and if his brother was right about what was coming, it wasn't going to end anytime soon.

"What's it like?" he asked instead, head tilted back against the seat as he stared out the top of the windshield at the world passing them by. His periphery caught the curious look his brother shot him, so he clarified what he thought was fairly obvious. "Time travel."

"It sucks," Dean answered obnoxiously. The blunt, immediate response made Sam chuckle, despite his dour mood. "You don't poop for like a week."

The younger brother laughed again, but shook his head. That's not what he meant and he had a feeling Dean knew it. "No, I mean what's it like? Being…back?"

His brother fell silent for a moment, eyes on the road as he contemplated his next words. After a moment, Dean wrapped his knuckles against the steering wheel and nodded to himself, as if coming to an internal conclusion. "It ain't a cakewalk, I'll tell you that much."

Sam turned his head to finally take his brother fully in. The older hunter chanced a glance his way. "Some of it's good. Seeing you – all wide eyed and schoolboy innocent."

The brunette huffed again while his brother smirked. "Jerk."

"Bitch. Seeing Bobby again." The drop of that smile, that smugness, was so instantaneous it almost took Sam's breath away. He recognized what his brother was doing suddenly. Dean had a hard time trusting people, and a harder time talking when it wasn't bravado. When the older Winchester finally faced both, it was a one-shot rush sort of thing. No time to pause, no time to think or change his mind.

It sobered Sam as quickly as it had quieted Dean, and he stared at his brother, the words registering slowly in his already full mind.

"When?"

Dean shook his head. "Not for a long time. Tough old bastard makes it through the apocalypse."

His brother shot him a grin, though he could see the bitter sadness behind it. Others that they knew weren't going to have the same fortune. Like their dad. Sam looked away. "As long as we don't change it."

Dean sucked in a breath of his own, air taken from his lungs like a punch to the diaphragm. He refocused on the road and ignored the creak of Baby's leather beneath his white-knuckled grip. "Right. As long as we don't change it."

-o-o-o-

"Did this happen last time?" Sam asked out of nowhere, several hours of silence between them and the last bout of rapid-fire questions he'd had for his brother. It was late – or early, depending on perspective – and the roads were empty and quiet.

"Did what happen? The kid?"

"My vision of him."

"Yeah. You saw the dad gassed in the garage," Dean answered, thinking back on what had been happening prior to them showing up on the Miller's front steps. "I was sure it wasn't real; just a nightmare. Guess I didn't want it to be real.""

"This was the first one I told you about?"

"No," Dean shook his head, "just the first one that wasn't about you. Jess, the old house; those had direct lines to you. I couldn't figure out why you'd be getting visions of some random dude in Michigan."

Sam was quiet for a moment as he digested that. Truth be told, he hadn't stopped to wonder. It had been a vision, as painful and disjointed as all the others. Well, maybe this one was less painful. His head had hurt, but he hadn't had the full migraine like the others gave him.

"Why am I dreaming of Jim Miller?"

Dean clenched his jaw for a moment, muscles along his neck flexing with the movement. Sam wondered for a moment if he'd lie again, or just not answer. But it only took a moment for his brother to respond, "Because Max is one of Azazel's kids. You're all connected, and you're gonna keep getting visions of 'em. All of 'em."

"How many more are there?"

The blonde shook his head. "Honestly? We never did a headcount. I know of about a dozen."

Sam sat in silence for a moment, wanting to ask the next question but really not wanting to know the answer. He'd heard enough terrible things for one night. "What happens to them?"

When they'd covered the apocalypse, Dean had rather glossed over the details he knew would hit his brother hardest. At least, he'd skipped the ones he could get away with, knowing they'd come back around eventually. He'd hoped to give the kid at least a couple hours respite between bad bouts of news, though.

"Azazel pits you all against one another in a Battle Royale," he answered honestly in one long breath. "The idea being the winner takes Lucifer to the Prom."

Sam frowned immediately. "I thought you said I was destined to do that from the start."

"You are. We both are." Dean switched on the wiper blades as rain started splattering down from the sky. "Problem with prophecies is they're not all that specific, and Hell wasn't taking chances. So that yellow eyed bastard found as many kids as he could. Up their odds of finding the right one, I guess."

The younger Winchester didn't have any more questions after that, fists slowly clenching against his thighs as he added a dozen more tallies to the list of lives he would be responsible for in the upcoming years.

-o-o-o-

It wasn't long after the sun came up that Dean's phone rang. They were outside Lansing, only an hour from Max Miller's home address. The older hunter glanced at the small screen listing the calling number, a curious frown on his face as he flipped it open.

So not Bobby then.

"Hello?" There was nothing but silence for Sam's part. Whoever was answering on the other line was soft-spoken enough that he couldn't catch anything from the tinny whispers. But by the way his brother's shoulders went rigid and his eyes wide and unfocused, recalling a long-ago memory, Sam was instantly alert.

"I'm sorry, Cassie, I can't."

The younger Winchester tilted his head at the name and it's similarity to the angel Dean had spoken of before. He immediately dismissed it given his brother's distant expression. This clearly wasn't the same person.

"My brother and I…we're, uh…we're on something we can't put off. But I'll…" Dean cleared his throat, running a hand over his mouth. His brother watched him curiously, having rarely seen his brother flustered before. And never by some civilian. "I'll send another hunter your way. He's the best."

The voice on the other line got even fainter.

"It's not about that, Cas-Cassie." Dean responded softy, gaze lowering to his lap. "I swear, I'd come if I could. But I'm sending you the best. He'll stop whatever's going on. I promise."

There were barely other words exchanged before the man from the future slipped the phone shut. He kept his eyes on the road, refusing to so much as look at his questioning brother. When Sam tried asking, Dean shrugged it off, naming the mysterious caller an old friend who had a case for them. With that, he pulled his phone back open and dialed Bobby to fill him in on the details, of which Dean, of course, knew everything.

-o-o-o-

"I get that Max is important. I want to save him and his family," Sam spoke up several miles later, "but this friend-"

"Don't worry about it, Sammy," his brother answered immediately, eyes still on the road. "It's a ghost running people off the road. Nothing Bobby can't handle. He even knows where to find the object it's tied to. Doesn't get easier than that."

And boy, was it nice to finally be able to openly use that future knowledge he had in hunts. He was damn tired of tiptoeing around cases he could wrap up in an hour with what he knew.

Sam didn't have a counter argument his brother would accept, so he fell silent for several more miles. "I didn't know you had female friends."

Dean finally looked at him, though it was hardly friendly.

"I have tons of female friends," he replied defensively, opening his mouth to continue only to falter. His gaze darted back to the road and he cleared his throat. "Just none we've met yet."

Sam chuckled at that. He watched his brother for another moment longer. "Were you close?"

Dean licked his lips, gaze darting to his side mirror to avoid looking at his brother. Thoughts of that beautiful young woman waiting for him to show up, to reconcile their terrible ending, filled his head. He'd never forgotten Cassie, and the minute he'd heard her voice, he'd recognized it. She was his first real love. But that was a long time ago now and the apocalypse was more important. Bobby could help Cassie, and Dean's reconciliation could take a back-seat to saving his brother.

"It's in the past, Sam. Has been for a long time for me."

"Okay," Sam replied softly, hearing more than his brother meant to say, but understanding. After all, the words he'd shared with Jess only hours ago were still ringing in his own mind.

-o-o-o-

Three blocks away from the Miller house, Dean pulled into a gas station, climbed out of the Impala and headed for the trunk. Sam followed, brow furled curiously. They still had half a tank from the stop in Rochester.

He caught the haphazardly thrown bundle of clothing from his brother and stared down in surprise at a suit, tie, and white dress shirt. He raised an eyebrow in Dean's direction.

"Feds get a lot further than repairmen."

Sam's mouth dropped open in surprise as Dean chucked something else at him that he caught on instinct. It was a badge – a really good fake – that read Federal Bureau of Investigation. He almost dropped it.

"Impersonating repair guys and wildlife services is one thing, but FBI?" He stared at his brother in open shock. "Dean, that's a felony!"

The man from the future just shrugged, heading for the gas station's attached restrooms. Sam followed after him, surprise still coloring his features. This was clearly not the first time his brother had done this. Not to mention the badge job was top-notch, something that only came with experience. He must have anticipated Sam would need one as well, considering he had purchased a suit in the younger Winchester's size.

"How many times have you impersonated a fed?"

"FBI, CIA, Homeland Security. Whatever, man. It's all the same; I lost track years ago."

Sam just kept staring, even after his brother ducked inside the restroom to change into a suit he never imagined his brother would wear so comfortably.

-o-o-o-

They pulled up to the curb outside of the Miller house after one of the longest drives Dean could ever remember. Sam was roller-coastering between melancholy and fierce curiosity. Not that he could blame the kid. It was a dump of downright unpleasant information Dean had given him.

Sam had always been a good man – one of the best Dean had ever known. It nearly killed the kid the first time he learned what he had unleashed on the world. That time, though, he'd had spiraling emotions, condemnation from his father, and abandonment by his brother to blame it on, to help explain why he'd done what he did, made the choices he made. To help him rationalize, accept, and fix it. This time it was just a man from the future, guaranteeing he'd make the mistakes that would try to end the world, with no real proof or reason why.

And this Sam, without Jess's death, without Dean's death, had no context. There was no way he could ever accept, could even understand, how he could ever be driven to do such a thing.

Dean wanted to believe that he wouldn't. He wanted to tell his kid brother that they'd stop it, that he was already off the path. But the man from the future knew this wasn't actually about him or Sam. Hell would never let them leave that road, and neither would Heaven. Each side was tenacious, cruel in the lengths they would go in their pursuit, and had the time and resources to force the Winchester's hands. They would find a way to turn his brother, of that he had no doubt.

It wasn't Sam he didn't trust with the coming Apocalypse. It was Hell, which he knew all too well.

"It looks pretty calm," Sam spoke up beside him, pulling his attention back to the suburban street they sat parked along. Sam had his head turned out the passenger window, staring at the house that looked so normal. Uneventful. "Maybe it hasn't happened yet."

"Maybe," Dean replied distantly, leaning over in his seat to stare at the innocuous house as well. "Only one way to find out."

"Do you know what's going to happen?" Sam asked before his brother could open the door.

Dean shrugged, still watching the house. "I don't remember much about the details. He killed his dad in the garage, think he went after his stepmom with a knife."

"And we stopped him?"

His brother didn't answer right away, thinking back to that floating knife, to his floating gun, and his brother pleading with a child who shared blood with him in all of the worst ways. He sighed, closing his eyes as he remembered how that confrontation had ended. "He killed himself. But the stepmom lived."

Sam was staring at him when he opened his eyes again.

"Can we change it? Can we save him?"

Dean straightened, broken arm reaching for the handle and pushing open the driver's side door with a squeak of metal. "Only one way to find out."

-o-o-o-

Max opened the door to two men in monkey suits who held up badges for him to glance at before flipping them closed and listing their names as Agents Simmons and Freely. The one that did all the talking seemed confident and in charge. Max immediately disliked him. His partner though was young, probably his own age if he had to guess, and couldn't figure out where to put his hands. Probably new to the job. Max didn't like him much either.

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah, kid. We'd like to have a word with you," the older replied, giving his partner a measured look that made the man finally settle his arms by his sides. Max stared unimpressed at them.

"About what?"

Agent Simmons opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by Max's father appearing over his shoulder, staring at the two suited men on his front steps. "What's this about?"

"Jim Miller?" The younger one asked, eyes wide in surprise and slight awe. Max frowned and immediately liked him even less.

His partner cast another warning look his way. Then he pulled out his badge once more, holding it up for Max's father. "FBI, sir. We just need to speak with your son."

"What have you done now?" his father growled down at him. Max tried to hide the flinch, but he knew he'd failed when both FBI agents straightened.

"Nothing," Max answered back through clenched teeth.

"He hasn't done anything wrong, sir," the younger agent said quickly, compassion in his eyes that made Max want to hit him.

"We think he may have witnessed a crime," the older partner added fluidly. "Witnesses placed your son and his friends near the scene of a burglary up on State and Center two days ago. We're just hoping Max might have seen something that could help us out."

Max's head shot forward with the hard slap that his father delivered to the back of his skull.

"What did I tell you about hanging out with those friends of yours, boy? Bunch of no-good low lives!"

Max grit his teeth, hand clenching into a fist as he straightened back up. It took all the strength he had to keep his breathing steady, to keep his hand from shooting out and strangling his father with those gifts he'd been given. He'd been practicing, like the yellow eyed man said, and he knew he could do it.

"That's enough!" The younger agent took a step forward, catching his father's wrist before he could deliver a second blow. His hazel eyes were fierce and locked on Max's father.

The older agent cleared his throat, but his gaze was reprimanding as well. "I think we'll speak to Max in private."

Max released the tension in his muscles and felt the vibration beneath his skin fade away as he did. Not now. Not in front of feds. He would kill his father, as he'd promised himself he would. He'd do it tonight, as planned, in the garage, where he could make it look like a suicide. Then no one would suspect a thing and he could finally be free of the bastard.

"Max?" The younger agent was holding his arm out, gesturing for him to walk down the drive towards the street. He straightened and pushed past both agents, not bothering to look back at his fuming father.

-o-o-o-

"Okay, who the hell are you guys?" The kid spun around as soon as they were by the curb, far enough away from the house for some privacy. "I wasn't anywhere near State and Center two days ago."

"We know," Sam answered, hands raised in placation.

"Just needed to get you away from douche-dad of the year," Dean added, dropping the fed persona as easily as he would later shed the monkey suit.

Max watched them through narrowed eyes, suspicion clear. "Why?"

"Because we really do need to talk," the younger Winchester supplied.

"About _what_?"

"You, kid. And your abilities." Dean kept his body language fairly open even as Max's immediately tensed and shut down. There was a moment of tense, deadly silence between them before the kid's hand shot out.

Dean got out half a curse, hand going for his gun even as it slipped from his hip and flew into the air between them. Max's outstretched hand almost touched the butt of the gun as it levitated in the middle of the three men, aimed pointedly at Dean.

"Whoa, whoa!" Sam made an aborted move forward, stopping when the weapon swung in his direction. He glanced around quickly, surveying the quiet suburban street for both witnesses and collateral. "It's okay, Max. I have them too."

The look on the kids face clearly said that was the last thing he'd expected to hear. His hand wavered for a moment, and the gun shook before steadying in the air once more. "What?"

"Not exactly like yours," Sam kept going, hands still raised. "I get these visions-"

"What sort of visions?"

"Death premonitions," Dean supplied, still eyeing his own gun still trained on his brother.

Max pulled a face, switching between the two brothers. "That's crazy."

Dean snorted, then immediately pulled a straight face when the gun jerked back towards him. He raised his hands as well, following his brother's lead. "Says the guy currently Harry Houdini-ing a gun."

"Max." Sam pushed his hands forward calmingly, catching the kid's attention. He was using the soft, puppydog voice he only used with victims, that one he'd eventually grow out of. "We just want to talk. We think they're connected – your powers, my visions. I think they come from the same place."

"The yellow eyed man," Max mumbled, eyes still darting between the two.

"You've seen him?" Sam lowered his hands, eyebrows raised. If Azazel had been messing with Max too then they'd have to protect him. Maybe they could make another deal, or lure the bastard into a trap and kill him once and for all.

"He comes to me in dreams," the kid answered, eyes focused on the younger Winchester. "Tells me…"

"What's he tell you, kid?"

Max's gaze flickered to Dean but when he spoke, he addressed Sam. "Did you have a vision of me? Am I going to die?"

"No, you're not-"

"He had a vision of your dad," Dean interrupted. They needed to cut to the chase here, not smother the kid with pity. Or answer that question honestly. "Dead, in the garage, because you killed him."

"What…" The kid's face scrunched up in confusion, and then flattened out in realization. "Are you here to _stop_ me?"

Given the incredulous tone, they weren't likely to talk him down from that murderous ledge as easily as they'd assumed.

"Max-"

"You _saw_ him back there!" he cut Sam off before the hunter could even get started. "You think that's bad? That's not even the tip of the iceberg."

"Max, I know you've had it rough-"

" _Rough?_ " The psychic's face reddened, his glower darkening with rage. Dean's eyes darted down to Max's free hand, fisting by his side, and the one splayed out in front of him controlling his gun. Both were shaking, and the gun trembled in the air to match. Man, he'd really hoped to get out of this situation without getting shot.

"You can't kill your parents," he retorted sharply, calling the kid's attention back to him and off of his brother. "No matter how much they deserve it."

"Why not?" Max rebuked, staring him down with the resolve of a kid who'd already accepted the consequence and made his decision regardless. "Who's gonna stop me? You?"

Dean pulled his shoulders back, staring down the little shit with resolve of his own. "If I have to."

"Okay, everyone calm down," Sam interrupted, stepping between them and coming almost abreast to the floating gun. At least anyone passing on the street behind them wouldn't see the levitating weapon anymore. "Max, we can help you."

"I don't need help. I'm strong now." Despite the watery sheen to his eyes, the kid stood tall and Sam faltered as he realized that talking him down might not even be an option anymore. "The yellow eyed man was right; I can make sure they never hurt me again."

"We'll get your parents locked away," Sam tried again, only to have Max once more cut him off.

"That's not good enough!"

"Really?" Dean laughed, bringing the kids anger his way once more. "Have you seen your father? He's not gonna do well in prison, kid. He'll get what he deserves."

"They _deserve_ to die!"

Sam's shoulders slouched slightly as he stared at the kid no older than he was, who'd obviously had just as shitty a childhood, if not far worse. John had never touched him – not bad enough to qualify as abuse. No, his weapon of choice hadn't been fists; it had been neglect and disappointment.

"That's how you get revenge?" Dean scoffed, the condescension in his voice clear as day.

"Yes!"

"Why?" Dean took a step forward, towards the gun and the kid. Sam's train of thought shifted to whether or not his idiot of an older brother was under the delusion that he was bullet proof. "They won't even know it was you. They'll just die, never having to own up to anything they did wrong. Never knowing you were the one that put them in their place."

"Dean…" Sam tried to caution his brother, concern seriously mounting. But Max just took a step back. His posture faltered as he stared at the older man with something broken in his expression. The gun lowered an inch, and it was obvious the kid's focus was no longer on it. "Let us help you, Max. We'll get your parents arrested. We can get you help."

"You mean a shrink," the kid answered back, but the anger was gone from his voice, replaced with bitterness. "Been there. I think I can handle myself."

The gun clattered to the sidewalk as Max turned and headed back up the drive without another word.

Sam let out a long sigh, rubbing his hands down his face. Dean bent over, scooping up the gun and checking the ivory hilt and cartridge for damage. He tucked it back into his hip holster, safely hidden away by the front flap of his suit jacket. Sam watched him do all of it so mechanically, rote motion par for the course.

Dean caught the look and frowned at him. "What?"

Sam shook his head and turned towards the Impala, parked a couple feet further down the street.

"The kid wants to stick it to his parents," Dean defended himself as he followed after his younger brother. "I figured pointing out the flaw in his plan might stop him."

"Oh, yeah, he totally seems stable now." Sam wrenched open the side door as Dean moved around to the passenger side. "Nice work."

"Shut up," Dean muttered, ducking into the Impala. "It worked, didn't it?"

-o-o-o-

Bobby clucked his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he sat in the Robinson's parlor, shotgun resting against the edge of the couch, tea untouched on the coffee table, and lighter tucked in his breast pocket, still warm from going Son of Sam on a racist truck.

"So..." He bobbed his head absently at the mother daughter duo sitting across from him just as awkwardly. "You and Dean, huh?"

Cassie shot him a dark glower as Mrs. Robinson glanced between the two of them, eyebrows raised and motherly interest clearly peaked.


	28. Season 1: Chapter 27

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Oh boy, here we go! Solid T rating for this chapter due to graphic descriptions of violence, gore, and death. Get ready for that cliffhanger, ladies and gents :D Oh, and Happy New Year :)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 27

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The Winchesters camped out in the Impala that night, parked on the curb across the street and two houses down from the Millers. Sam and Dean had spent the afternoon catching up on the sleep they'd missed driving through the night, fairly confident nothing would happen since Sam's vision of Jim Miller dying in his garage had definitely shown a nighttime attack. So there they were, stuck watching the quiet house through the late hours of the night for signs of movement in the garage in case Max went through with his murderous plan.

Jim Miller came home at 11:15 in his two door sedan, Michigan license plate a dead match for Sam's death premonition. The Winchesters watched, tense, as Mr. Miller climbed out of his car, made his way towards the door to the house, and pressed the button for the garage door to close.

Sam and Dean waited with another held breath as the light flickered off and everything remained perfectly calm. Dean turned the engine over and the Impala crept forward until they were across the street from the Miller house. He turned off the car, the smooth rumbling falling silent in the still night.

They couldn't hear an engine running from the garage, heard no screams for help or any disturbance of any kind, really. Dean shared a look with Sam, and the two settled in to make sure that didn't change for the rest of the night.

-o-o-o-

When the sun peaked over the first house at six thirty, Dean let out a jaw-splitting yawn. He reached for the keys, ready to call it and go find some sanctuary in flat pillows and stained motel sheets. "Think we're good?"

Sam was still watching the house, a gnawing deep in his stomach causing him to question the obvious. Jim Miller hadn't died in the garage overnight. There'd been no commotion in the house whatsoever, and Sam's vision had definitely taken place at night. Still, the hunter couldn't shake the firmly planted dread.

But, to be honest, he'd had had that pit in his stomach since Dean told him the apocalypse was well on its way and they were the main stars.

"Yeah," he finally answered, pulling his gaze away from the house with some difficulty. He settled in into the leather seat, forcing himself not to look back. "Yeah, let's go get some sleep."

Dean hummed happily in agreement, put Baby into gear, and pulled away from the Miller house.

-o-o-o-

Sam woke from blood and cries for help to Dean shaking him almost desperately.

"Sammy! Wake up!"

The younger Winchester shot upright in the motel bed, lungs heaving and sweat pooling along the planes of his body. Disoriented, he snatched at his brother's chest, Dean already holding on to Sam's shoulder with his casted left arm, unbroken limb grabbing the younger man's forearm to shake him awake.

"Dean?"

His brother let out a sigh of relief, but the tension didn't leave his body as he took a step away from the bed. Sam let him go, releasing his fistful of Dean's shirt.

"Yeah," Dean breathed out, scrubbing a hand through his short hair as he stared at his heaving, wide-eyed brother. "Well that's not a good sign."

Sam shook his head, memories he'd carry with him for months to come flashing across his eyelids again. So much blood. The younger Winchester kicked away the tangled sheets and swung his legs over the bed. "We gotta go. We gotta go right now."

"Right." Dean nodded, already grabbing his jeans and working his legs into them as he half-hopped towards the dresser and the keys to the Impala.

-o-o-o-

"You gonna tell me what you saw?" his brother finally asked as they raced through midday traffic of south town Sagginaw, back towards the Millers.

Sam clenched his jaw, staring straight ahead. "Just drive faster."

Dean complied, the engine rumbling with approval as he navigated suburban streets at very illegal speeds.

-o-o-o-

The Impala screeched to a halt outside the Miller house, leaving tire treads right up to the curb. Sam was out of the car before Dean had the engine off, and his older brother followed immediately after him. The two raced for the front door, Sam pounding on the wood as soon as he was within reach.

"Max! Mr. Miller?" Sam continued beating the door long past the point where it was obvious no one was going to answer. Dean finally pushed his younger brother to the side and delivered a swift kick to the wood, splintering the edge of the door and taking the lock with it.

The two brothers rushed into the Miller house. Sam took the lead, no hesitation in his run as he headed straight for the kitchen. Dean drew up short as soon as they skidded onto the tile. He didn't catch the sound that made it past his throat as he threw the back of his hand over his mouth and turned away from the site that greeted them.

"Jesus!" Dean slid his eyes shut against the horrific image, hand cupping over his mouth.

Shoulders slumped, Sam stared at the two bodies poised exactly as he had seen in his sleep. Mr. and Mrs. Miller both lay on the floor, pools of blood surrounding their still warm bodies. Alice Miller was face up on the tiles, the only identifiable part left of her was her blonde hair, haloed out around a swollen face, purpled and split in so many places she looked more like flayed meat than a human being. Jim Miller was collapsed half on his side, knife sticking out of his throat, buried to the hilt with his own hand still wrapped around the handle.

Sam finally turned away when he saw the bloodied, broken skin of Jim's knuckles wrapped around the blade and knew it had been those hands that inflicted the damage to his wife's body.

"Why?" he mumbled, more to himself than to the silence of a room where half its occupants were dead. He grabbed at the sides of his head, remembering the way Max had stood there and watched as Jim Miller was forced to beat his wife to death and then stab himself. Max had just watched. Watched like his stepmother had watched for twenty three years. Sam let out a feral cry, slamming his hand into the doorframe of the kitchen. "Why have these visions if we can't stop them? What's the point!"

Dean didn't answer, but his thoughts weren't far from his brother's. He could, after all, relate more now than ever before. Steeling himself, the man from the future turned back into the room and the results of his careless presence in this timeline.

"This isn't on you," he replied softly, though his voice was rough with anger and guilt. He stared at Alice Miller, dead and bloodied because of him. "I'm the one who pushed the kid."

Yeah, he had. Sam looked to his brother rather than the gruesome scene in front of them. Dean may have pushed the psychic in the worst direction he possibly could have, but he hadn't seen Max's face, watching his father murder his stepmom. Sam had. There was no talking anyone out of that.

"It's not on you either," he responded after a moment. Dean snorted, his opinion of that clear enough, but Sam pushed on, "The only one responsible for this is Max."

"Well, he'll be in the wind now." Dean glanced around at the blood splattered walls, the half-prepared meal lying untouched on the kitchen counter, the bloody shoe prints pressed into the carpet to leave a trail towards the back of the house. He took the scene in with a cop's eye. "Even with the murder/suicide look, the police will want to question him. If he knows what's good for him, he's long gone."

"The kicked in door and additional suspects will help his cause," Sam added quietly, looking pointedly down at their own booted feet. Dean may have managed not to enter the kitchen far enough to contaminate the scene, but he'd stepped through one of Max's bloody footprints on the way in and that would be enough for the cops to know there were multiple perpetrators.

"Damn it," Dean muttered, patting himself down. With his good arm, he pulled a handkerchief and then another from his back pocket. "We need to wipe down any place we might have left prints. That wall, front door…"

Sam held his hand out for the second handkerchief, but Dean had trailed off, staring at the blue and white fabric clenched in his hand. The younger Winchester raised a brow when his brother didn't move. "Dean?"

"I've done this before."

Sam frowned at the whispered words, hand still held out for the cloth. Sure, they'd had to wipe down evidence of their presence at dozens of crime scenes throughout their life (and yet Dean still thought they had a good childhood). Somehow, Sam doubted that's what his brother was talking about, though. "You mean the murders? I thought you said the stepmom lived the first time."

"No, I mean this." He shook his hand with the handkerchief in it, still staring at the fabric. Finally he lifted his gaze, first taking in his brother and then the room around them. Given the distant glint to his eye, though, Sam doubted it was the Miller house he was seeing. "We were…we were on a fire escape. Outside a window."

Sam looked around the house as well, not sure what his brother was seeing or even looking for. But he let him work through the deja vu, if that's what it was. Dean went rigid, whatever memory he was trying to access finally secured in his brain. He turned to his brother, eyes wide.

"The window was covered in blood."

"What?" Sam blinked, then blinked again as something twinged just behind his eyes. Dean was already moving through, darting forward to wipe down the wall Sam had slammed his palm into.

"Max didn't just kill his dad," his brother said as he hastily wiped at the wall. "He killed his uncle too!"

Sam tilted his head at the pressure behind his eyeball grew to encompass his temple. It didn't hurt, but it certainly wasn't a pleasant feeling either. Nor was it a good sign. He started moving, grabbing the second cloth from his brother and heading for the front door. If Max was going after someone else, then they had to go. Quickly. He stumbled on his way there, intent to wipe free of any evidence of their earlier pounding completely derailed as the pressure in his head flared, overriding his balance. He crashed into the living room wall.

"Sammy?" Dean was by his side in a second, steadying him with an arm to either shoulder. Sam sank to his knees, hand pressed to his temple as both the pressure and the Miller's living room were replaced with flashes of light and then instant clarity.

He was standing on the curb outside an apartment complex in the setting sunlight of dusk, gold lettering on the front door reading Saginam Manor. Sam frowned, turning first left and then right in the relatively quiet urban area. Whistling caught his attention, and the hunter turned to see a man emerge from around the building, twirling car keys on his finger. He strolled up to the door, entering a four digit code to enter the building. Four five two eight. The door beeped and the man – who Sam could only assume was Max Miller's uncle – slipped through the glass doors.

"Hey!" Sam took a step towards the man, but a flash of light blinded him and he covered his eyes with his forearm, stumbling back a step. As soon as his vision cleared, he turned around only to find himself in an apartment. He spun again as keys jingled in the door.

The same man stepped through the front entrance, turned the key and pulled them from the lock. He resumed his earlier whistle, tossing the keys into a bowl on an entrance table as he walked right past Sam like he wasn't even there.

"Hey."

Max's uncle shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it on the kitchenette table as he headed into the galley style kitchen. Frustrated, Sam followed after.

"Hey!"

A shadow moved in his periphery and Sam spun around before he made it to the kitchen. Max. He was here. Sam moved into the hallway as Max's uncle pulled a beer from the fridge, cracking it with the bottle opener magnet off the side of the fridge. Sam glanced either way down the hall, keen eyes looking for any sign of Max.

"Hello, Uncle Roger."

The hunter spun around, only to find Max standing between him and the kitchen, his back to the hunter as he faced down his uncle. Roger, for his part, looked up from his beer with a hint of surprise on his face, quickly replaced by derision.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he groused to his nephew, taking a sip of his beer and moving to push past Max. The kid stood firm, however, and the beer suddenly shattered in Roger's hand.

"What the hell-" Roger hissed as he grabbed at his hand, a shard of green glass sticking out of his palm. "Son of a bitch!"

He ignored his nephew, moving instead for the sink. He froze, however, when the glass rattled on the floor. Roger stared down at it, a frown across his face which quickly morphed into horror as the shards lifted off the ground and aligned themselves to hover in front of his face between him and Max.

"What-"

"How does it feel?" Max stood, jaw shaking in anger and eyes furious in concentration and hatred. With clenched fists, he jerked his head to the side. Sam shouted out a warning, but no one reacted to him as a single piece of green glass flew forward like lighting.

Roger yelped, stumbling back and grabbing at his cheek and the fresh slice through his skin. He looked down at his hand, the blood dotting his fingertips, and then back at his nephew in renewed horror.

"Max…"

"I'm going to repay _every_ bruise you ever gave me. Piece. By. Piece."

"Max, don't!" Sam tried to move forward, to stop him, but his arm went right through the kid. Nothing but a vision of something that hadn't happened yet.

"No, Max, wait, please!" Roger stumbled backward, back hitting the wall and kitchen window that led to the fire escape beyond. Another piece of glass flew forward and Roger lifted his arms in self-defense. He cried out as the glass sliced through the flesh of his forearm, far deeper than the first cut.

Max's eyes narrowed as his uncle looked back up at him in realization. The remaining glass pieces twitched, and Roger's eyes widened as they all moved towards him at once. Sam knew he was about to watch Roger Miller get cut to shreds.

Suddenly, the front door burst inward with a bang and, as one, Sam and Max spun towards the interruption.

"Sammy!"

Sam jerked back to the present, shooting forward so suddenly that Dean had to grab onto him to keep him from slamming straight into the side table by his head.

"We gotta go," he whispered hoarsely, vision still spinning.

"Yup," was all his brother said, already pulling the unsteady psychic to his feet and hauling him towards the front door. "You got an address?"

"Close enough to one," Sam muttered, hand pressed to his head. Dean stopped them just long enough to give the front door a messy wipe down with the handkerchief, and then the two were moving down the drive towards the haphazardly parked Impala.

-o-o-o-

Pushing the car as fast as they could in broad daylight, the brothers headed to the address listed under Saginam Manor Apartments in the Yellow Pages. Out of nowhere, the tension in the car having created a heavy silence between the two, Dean hit the steering wheel. Sam startled, turning to his brother as the older hunter let out a frustrated grunt.

"It doesn't make sense."

Sam snorted. "What part?"

"All of it!" Dean shook his head, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of his hand again. "This didn't happen last time."

"Yeah, but our presence here – you knowing what you know – would naturally change things." Sam tried to take the logical route, though he knew his brother was already well aware of what his presence would do. He'd been dealing with the reality of it for almost seven months now.

All Dean heard was Sam's nice way of avoiding the fact that he'd pushed the kid into brutally murdering his entire family.

"It's not just that," he argued back, eyes on the road as he swerved around a Volvo. "Cassie – the friend who called? We went last time. Helped her solve that case."

Yeah, Sam had kind of figured, given the details Dean had had on hand to pass on to Bobby. But he didn't exactly see how that figured into the situation with Max.

"How come, this time, she calls and we're already on our way to Max? You'd already seen him gas his dad."

The pre-law student frowned, starting to catch on to his brother's point. "Which happened first last time?"

Dean let out an annoyed growl deep in his throat. "I don't know, not for sure. But I think we wrapped the thing with Cassie first. Either way, they weren't on top of each other, not like this. I'd remember that."

Which made sense. Right now, they were separate memories for Dean, which made placing them in chronological order harder. If there had been overlap, Dean likely would be able to recall the thing that tied the memories together. But what could have changed?

"You think Cassie called later?" Sam asked, thoughts spinning with theoreticals and paradoxes. There was a reason people wrote entire papers on the concept of time and traveling through it.

"What would make her do that?" Dean countered, clenching his jaw. "Time travel ain't the clearest thing, but as I understand it, nothing should change that we don't change ourselves."

"So Cassie should have gone through the same actions at the same time," Sam reasoned out loud.

"Max too. At least until we got here."

Sam pursed his lips, mind racing. If both parties should have followed the same path before Dean and Sam interacted with them, then something else, another force connected to Dean's time travel, must have interfered to speed up one of them.

"Unless it's a butterfly effect."

Dean arched a brow his direction. "A what?"

"Butterfly effect," Sam repeated. "You know, a butterfly flaps its wings in California today, tomorrow there's a typhoon in the Philippines?"

Dean was staring at him like he was crazy, and the younger of the two rolled his eyes,

"It's the idea that the smallest of actions can have ripple effects, creating disproportionally larger reactions that are impossible to predict." Which could explain why Cassie or Max had changed their actions. It was probably far more complicated than they could ever track, with any number of degrees of separation between whatever Dean did and the end result of one of them moving up their time table, but it wasn't impossible. It was, however, really bad news for them.

That was one theoretical problem with time travel. If whatever they did effected non-local change, then there was no way they could keep those changes small. There would always be too many variables, too many ways the world was connected to avoid the domino effect.

"Well it better not be that," Dean groused, the vein in his temple twitching as he clenched his jaw painfully. "We've done a hell of a lot more than flap some butterfly wings here, Sammy."

The younger Winchester wisely didn't respond to that, instead turning his gaze out the windshield and silently urging the Impala to go faster.

-o-o-o-

Outside the apartment, Dean threw the Impala into park and reached for the door, but Sam's hand wrapping around his forearm held him up.

"Dean, you can't take your gun in there." Sam was staring at him like the statement was an obvious one, but Dean did a double take, glancing at the .45 in his hand.

"I'm not going in there unarmed, Sammy. And neither are you!"

"He's already taken your gun once," the younger Winchester argued back, "and last time you said he killed himself with it."

That, if nothing else, gave Dean pause, but ultimately he shook his head. "What the hell am I supposed to do? The guy can take a knife off me as easily as a gun, Sam, and I'm not going in there unarmed."

With that, the older Winchester climbed out of the car, tucking his ivory laid pistol into the back of his jeans. Sam gave him a look over the roof of the car, which Dean pointedly ignore.

"Look," he said as they moved around the car, hastily jogging towards the double glass doors that marked the front of the apartment complex, "I won't pull it unless I intend to use it."

The look his younger brother sent him spoke volumes as to what Sam though of that plan. He punched in the four digit code Dean could only assume he'd seen in his vision and the security box beeped, the sound of the lock releasing from the door. Dean pulled it open, gesturing his brother inside.

"He probably has to see it to use it, right?" the man from the future continued as they started through the halls, looking for the elevator. His brother shrugged beside him, still looking unconvinced. "So, I won't pull it unless I intend to use it before he can."

Sam drew up short even as they rounded the corner to the bank of elevators, staring at his brother. The older man didn't stop moving, reaching the wall and pressing the up button. Sam was slower to join him, but didn't argue his point. The young hunter knew they were quickly approaching the point where Dean's solution would be their only solution.

-o-o-o-

They burst into the apartment, Max spinning around to see them as Roger Miller pressed himself against the kitchen window, clutching his bleeding forearm. Glass shards clinked like a mockery of a peaceful wind chime as what was left of the beer bottle fell to the kitchen tiles under Max's shift in focus.

"Get out!"

Sam raised his hands in placation, but was already shaking his head regretfully. "We can't do that, Max. We can't let you kill him."

"It's none of your business!" the traumatized man yelled, face reddening. "I won't let you stop me!"

Max spun back to the kitchen to find Roger pushing open the window, intent to escape through it. He let out a howl, jerking his head to the side and back. His uncle yelled as he went flying back into the kitchen, skidding across the kitchen tiles straight towards his nephew.

Dean's fingers twitched against his thigh to draw his gun, but he held back. He'd made his brother a promise, and one born out of a damn good point. No reason to give the kid a faster method of killing his uncle. Or himself.

Sam took a step forward, knowing his brother would intervene more forcefully if it meant saving Roger Miller's life. "Listen to me, Max. This has to stop."

"It will," he growled through clenched teeth, staring down at the man who had beat him for so many years, who had been the source of every nightmare, waking and asleep. Roger Miller curled up on himself, sobbing like a pathetic bully that he was. Max held out his hand. "After my uncle, it'll stop."

"No!" Sam moved into the kitchen and Max's field of vision, staying clear of his uncle but still with those hands raised and his eyes pleading. "You need to let him go."

"Why?" Max balked, staring at the man who knew nothing about him. Who had no idea what his life was like, the hell he had lived through. Who dared to take his revenge – his justice – away from him.

"What they did to you growing up…They deserve to be punished, Max, I get that-"

"Growing up?" Max stared at Sam with wild eyes. Suddenly, he straightened, reaching for his shirt. Dean, who had been moving in behind him, froze with his hand wrapped around the hilt of his gun, but Sam shook his head as minutely as possible. Max pulled up the hem of his shirt, well above his pectorals to reveal a hell of a bruise, blossomed across his side, over his ribs and up towards his collar bone.

Sam suddenly found himself struggling to breathe at the myriad of colors and suffering that covered the kid.

"Try four hours ago," Max bit out, lowering his shirt back down. "Guess old habits die hard."

"Your uncle wasn't at your house four hours ago," Sam tried to reason weakly, licking his lips. Even he knew it was a pathetic excuse.

"You think he's any different? So it was my dad this time. It's been him plenty of times before." Roger flinched as Max pointed at him with a shaking finger. The glass on the floor of the kitchen started to rattle around them.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered, and meant it. "Why didn't you just leave?"

Max shook his head at him, eyes filled with the betrayal of yet another person failing to get him. "It wasn't about getting away. It was about being…not afraid anymore. My whole life I've been helpless…not anymore. Now I'm strong."

Max turned back to his uncle and Dean moved in, drawing his gun and pressing the muzzle flush to the man's back. Sam sucked in a breath, expecting to see the misunderstood, mistreated kid hit the floor with a bullet to his spine. But the moment came and left, his older brother standing there with the gun against Max's back and a fierce expression on his face that belied the fact he couldn't pull that trigger.

"It's over," Dean said instead, false bravado and confidence in his voice. "You're not gonna kill him."

Max tilted his head to the side, glancing from his periphery at the man behind him. He raised his arms out to the side slowly in a mockery of surrender that was anything but. The fake FBI agents both tensed, and for a single moment, Max reveled in their fear of him.

"I won't have to."

Dean swore as the gun was ripped from his grasp once more, a single shot cracking off but veering wide. He was sent flying through the air seconds later, crashing atop Roger and rolling off of him with his momentum. The man grunted beneath him, but the hunter was fairly sure he'd live.

Sam moved to tackle Max, but the gun came to a frozen halt between them, barrel aimed straight at the taller man's head. Sam glared down the length of the gun at the kid controlling it. Max smirked, holding out one hand towards Dean and his uncle. Sam tensed, expecting him to go after Roger, with nothing he or Dean could do to stop him.

Instead, his older brother let out a grunt of surprise as he straightened upright on his knees on the kitchen floor. His body was rigid and stiff, and his eyes blown wide in confusion.

"Dean?"

The hunter made a strangled noise as he suddenly bent down and landed a solid right hook straight across Roger Miller's face. The man cried out, arms coming up to his bleeding, busted nose.

"Shit!" Dean swore through gritted teeth as his broken left arm came down right after, cast splintering with a solid crack as he caught the wounded man across his cheek. Roger's head snapped to the side as Dean let out a painful cry. Fist after fist reigned down as the hunter screamed out against it. "I'm not doing it. Damn it, Sam, you gotta stop him!"

Sam took a forceful step forward but Max snapped his attention back, head tilting in a daring motion as the gun cocked between them. The hunter drew up short, teeth gritted and bared as he stared at the gun and the boy, wondering if he could get to one before the other went off.

"Sam!"

Roger Miller was barely fighting back anymore, arms weakly held up to stop the barrage of fists that hit every inch of available flesh. Dean was going to end up killing him if Sam didn't do anything.

"Damn it, Sam, knock me out!"

Max turned at the command, surprise lighting his eyes and Sam took his chance. He might not have made it to Max before the gun went off, but he could easily dodge to the side, to Dean, and out of that path of that gun, which is exactly what he did. Max didn't even have a chance to fire the weapon before Sam was tackling his brother with a right hook of his own.

Dean went down hard, head cracking against the kitchen tile loud enough to make Sam flinch. But he didn't get back up, which had been the whole idea.

Sam straightened slowly, posture stiff and dangerous, as he turned back to Max. The kid's face had a hardened look all his own, the enjoyment of this gone from his eyes. Now Sam was only in the way.

The youngest Winchester threw out his hand on instinct as soon as that gun rounded on him once more, and the weapon twitched and shook in the air as the two psychics fought for control of the device. Sam grit his teeth against the strain and put all of his focus into keeping the gun aimed away from himself, his brother, and Roger Miller. The trigger trembled beneath their opposed strengths. Max had a lot more practice, but Sam was quickly losing any reason to hold back.

"You know the difference between us?" Max asked, voice shaking from equal parts mental strain and anger. "You don't have the guts to do it. To take what you want."

The gun waivered, and then slowly but surely started towards Dean, groaning on the kitchen floor as he started to come to. Sam clenched his teeth, fingertips curling as he fought to hold the gun back but lost ground, one centimeter at a time.

He could once more feel the vibrations beneath his skin which were becoming terrifyingly familiar. Sam knew he was holding back; he could hear them singing for release, for the freedom he had granted them once, when they faced off against a lifeless hunk of metal.

The gun slipped another inch closer to his brother, coming within firing range of the downed hunter.

"You know the difference between us, Max?" He tore his eyes off the weapon to meet the watery, rage-filled gaze of the kid he could have become so easily. "I don't need a gun."

Sam released his grip on the weapon and on himself. His hand dropped and the gun went flying into the kitchen wall under the sudden pull of only one master. It fired off with a thunderous crack, the bullet ripping through the air and shattering the window. Dean weakly covered his head, limbs disoriented and only half-responsive, as glass reigned down around him.

In the same movement, Sam raised his other hand and curled his fingers into a tight, aching fist around an invisible object. Across from him, eyes still wide in surprise at the one eighty turn of events, Max suddenly choked on his own throat. His eyes bulged as he scrambled for his neck, the air within his chest turning against him as Sam squeezed his power around the man's lungs and windpipe. A torn gag ripped from the kid's throat as he started to asphyxiate on nothing, fingers clawing at his skin.

Sam knew what he had to do. Max wasn't going to stop, he couldn't be talked down. And Sam had to end it before he could kill anyone else, especially Dean.

The blood in his veins sung in release, vibrations humming through every limb as they stretched across the space between predator and prey and wrapped their icy hands around Max Miller.

"S'm…" Dean made it onto his back on the kitchen floor, hand pressed weakly against his aching jaw as he stared up at the multiple swaying men looming above him. He blinked hard, trying to clear his vision with little success. "S'm, don't."

The young hunter didn't answer, his focus entirely on Max. He honed in past the shallow surface of the world, beneath skin and blood and muscle, searching for something deeper. Max shuddered, a gasp caught in his sealed throat and escaping only as a pained gurgle. Sam found his target – a weak, shuddering glow at the center of his prey. The edges flickered grey, and streaks of slimy black perforated the light like blackened veins.

If Sam could pull those out, Max would never hurt anyone ever again.

He tightened his hold on the boy, reaching his other hand up and towards the frozen man. Curling his fingers, he could feel the same slimy darkness that had wrapped around the Baku's center. Just like then, Sam moved more on sense than knowledge, clenching his power around a sliver of that taint.

Max writhed in his grip, what were surely screams cut off by his sealed throat escaped only as squeaks, but Sam was too focused to see or hear the world around him.

"Sam!" Dean was upright now and struggling to stay that way through what was no doubt a concussion. "Sam, stop, yer killin' him."

But Sam didn't stop, or perceive his brother's words beyond sound that existed out _there_. He was inside, beyond the physical world, a layer deeper. The power within him thrummed with that connection, and he breathed with each powerful surge sent through his body.

Max's face was turning a dangerous shade of purple and his struggles starting to falter. The edges of the light in his chest flickered further, grey beginning to crawl its way towards the center. Sam didn't pay it any attention, focused on the dark veins, the poison the demon Azazel had left behind.

"Sammy!"

The young psychic was suddenly ripped from that other world by a very physical hand wrapped around his calf, fingers gripping into jeans tight enough to bruise. Sam blinked, hands dropping as he stared down at his brother, half collapsed on the floor with his arm stretched out, hand clenched around Sam's leg. Injury-glazed eyes searched up at his own pleadingly.

"Yer not a killer, Sam." The words were slurred, but desperate. Sam could tell his brother was about half a second from passing out, yet that grip on his leg never waivered. "That's not…what those powers mean."

Max stumbled onto the floor of the kitchen, barely catching himself against the counter as he hacked and coughed. The full force of what he'd almost done hit Sam like a semi to the chest and he stumbled back a step. Dean's fingers slipped from his jeans as his brother let his head fall back to the cool tile. He was still conscious; the long, moaning groan was proof of that.

Sam stared, horrified, as Max tried to right himself using the counter as support, but it was clear he was struggling to breathe. He clutched at his chest and throat, and the young hunter paled at the deep, red finger marks starting to purple around the boy's throat. Sam hadn't even touched him.

He looked down at his hands, knowing that he hadn't needed to.

"Sam," Dean mumbled, head still pressed to the floor but he made a momentous effort to get back to his knees at the very least. Dazed green eyes started up at three tilting versions of his brother, and he tried adamantly to stay on the one in the middle. "It's okay."

It really wasn't.

Sam lowered shaky hands back to his side, the sight of them causing nothing but nausea in his stomach. He'd been trying to help. Consciously, he knew that. He'd known if he could somehow pull that darkness from Max, he could fix him. But in doing so, he'd almost killed him.

And he wouldn't have even noticed.

Hazel eyes flickered up. Max lifted his head, face still an ugly red, to meet his gaze. There was terror in his eyes that Sam had put there. The youngest Winchester opened his mouth, no clue what to say, but desperate to say something.

Max Miller's head suddenly snapped a hundred and eighty degrees around with a terrifyingly loud crack. His body slumped to the floor beside his equally unmoving uncle.

Sam stumbled back in shock, hitting the counter on the other side of the galley kitchen with legs that weren't going to hold him up for much longer. Dean scrambled back, succeeding only in falling over more than moving away. His eyes traced over the floor to the pair of dusty boots standing just past Max's now lifeless body, up past the old jeans and flannel shirt, to the pale yellow irises of the demon standing in the kitchen doorway.

"Sam, Dean," Azazel greeted with a cheerful smile on his borrowed face. "I think it's time for a chat."


	29. Season 1: Chapter 28

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Reviews** : Thank you to all who reviewed. As always, your comments are the highlight of my day. To the guest reviewer who mentioned the titanic in regards to last chapter! Aaaaaaah. Okay, that's going to have to be a deleted scene. Seriously. That's too good to pass up._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Repeat of last chapter's warnings. Depictions of violence, bit of gore, and torture. Solid T rating here. But it wouldn't be a Supernatural worthy story if there wasn't some humor in there too ;)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 28

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam's head was heavy, chin swaying against his chest with each slow breath and the back of his neck aching at the harsh angle. Waking was a slow thing, his mind groggy and not particularly motivated to leave the cocoon of darkness that surrounded him. It was the invading cold, starting with his toes and crawling up his legs, mirrored in his arms and neck, that finally forced him to open his eyes.

Blobs of grays and blues swayed slowly into recognizable, if not confusing, shapes. The switch over only took a second; the moment of realization that this wasn't a hotel, that he wasn't lying in bed with the covers having slipped off, turned Sam's mind from tired and groggy to alert with whiplash-worthy speed. The hunter jerked forward, constricted lungs drawing in a sudden and forceful breath that was cut short when his ribs had no leeway to expand.

Sam's mind stumbled for a second as he looked down at his chest. Chains looped around his heaving torso, cutting each breath shallow. Both of his arms were included in the bonds, links digging in at his elbows and pressing the limbs tight to his upright body. The hunter quickly glanced over his shoulder at the thick, wooden support pillar he was strapped to. He gave a fierce tug to the chains, straining his muscles against the restraints with little success. The pillar behind him, despite being old and covered in several questionably growing things, was sturdy.

The well-trained hunter turned his gaze to the rest of the room, immediately searching for something to help in his escape. He was in an old building – possibly a hunting cabin – that was poorly lit and succumbing to what looked like years of abandonment. It was a one-room, wooden structure from what he could tell. The majority of the windows were broken, probably from rocks given the shatter patterns of what glass remained. Most of the furniture that was left standing didn't look like it would stay that way for long. Several walls sported graffiti of various forms, from spray paint to splatter that looked a lot like blood, but given the obvious teenage hangout vibe of the abandoned building, Sam guessed was nothing more than red paint.

If there was a door into the cabin, it was behind him where he couldn't see it. There was nothing within reach that was going to help against chains, and nothing he could reach either way, restrained as he was. The stillness of the world beyond the cabin – the rustle of pine trees and leaves, the occasional twitter of a bird or the scuttle of a ground animal – suggested yelling for help was going to be just as useless.

His best bet at this point was his brother.

"Dean."

Sam strained against the chains once more just for good measure as he called out to the older man, who was collapsed, unbound, by the wall opposite Sam. He was slumped against the bare structure, neck tucked to his chest at an angle that suggested someone dropped him without much care. Sam clenched his teeth when his brother didn't so much as move.

"Dean!"

The fact that he wasn't tied up should have encouraged hope. It was probably orchestrated to, actually. But Sam felt the exact opposite. If Dean wasn't tied up, it was because the demon was coming back. Or already watching them. Sam turned his head against the pillar once more, straining to see the rest of the room behind him. But the pillar was the central support for the roof of the large, open room. It was wide, almost as wide as his shoulders, and just as deep. He couldn't see past it.

"Dean, come on, man. At least tell me you're alive."

Sam already knew he was from the steady rise and fall of his chest. But it had never been beneath him to use his brother's hard-coded protectiveness to get what he wanted.

"Dean!"

"'M alive," the man mumbled against his chest, hand twitching where it laid across his chest. The movement distracted the younger hunter for a second and he stared at that hand, knuckles busted, blood scabbed over but fingers still splattered with the evidence of what he'd done. His brother's other arm was motionless on the floor beside him, the white medical cast now covered in streaks of dirt and dotted red with Roger Miller's blood. A crack ran up the side from the force of each punch.

Sam shook himself, pushing his focus back on the problem at hand. Regret could be dealt with later. He glanced over his shoulder again, then back to his brother. "Dean, you need to get up. Right now."

"Kay," came the muttered reply, though his brother didn't move for another second. Sam's leg started jiggling anxiously, but Dean's arm twitched again and then he was struggling upright with a momentous groan. "'M up."

Glazed green eyes opened to slits, taking in the room around him slowly and with the rote movements of someone not fully awake.

"S'm?"

"Over here," he supplied, watching his brother closely. Sluggish movements, delayed reactions, slurred words; he looked drunk. Concussion then. Sam wasn't surprised, given that Dean's right cheek was a blossom of vibrant purples and blues, swollen twice in size and constricting at least some of his vision out of that eye. Sam remembered the way his brother's head had bounced off the linoleum tile of Roger Miller's kitchen.

He swallowed heavily. Well, at least Dean had woken up at all.

"Wha's goin' on?" Dean sat on the floor, upper body swaying as he stared up at his younger brother.

"We need to get out of here," Sam answered softly, not trying to baby his older brother but aware how unpleasant loud sounds were for a head wound. "You're not tied up, but I am. Think you can get me free?"

"Not a child," his brother muttered moodily, climbing to his feet in a single movement that made Sam grin. The way he swayed and stumbled back into the wall after coming to his feet was somewhat less encouraging. But the hunter knew his brother was tougher than nails and he had every faith in him.

"Whoa," Dean mumbled as he righted himself against the wall. His eyes narrowed as he stared at his brother, who seemed miles away given how much of a challenge standing had been. "Concussion?"

"Concussion," Sam confirmed with a twitch of his lips.

His older brother gave a firm nod, then immediately groaned in regret of the action. Muttering about head wounds, he made his way across the ten feet of distance separating him from Sam. The younger of the two tried not to rush him, knowing he was probably seeing three of everything, at a minimum. Not to mention the room would be swaying like a ship on rough seas.

Dean managed the voyage in a few long strides, and Sam was relieved to see a little more clarity in his eyes as he got to him. Calloused hands ran over the chains briefly, giving a quick tug before following them around to the back, where Sam assumed they were locked together.

"What happened?" Dean asked, words still slurred but sounding stronger.

"Azazel." Sam grit his teeth, closing his eyes against the memory of Max Miller's neck snapping and his lifeless body hitting the floor. "He must have knocked us out."

Dean grunted from behind the pillar, hands wrapping around the key-release padlock that hooked together two ends of chain. He scanned his still blurry vision around the room in search of a key, but came up empty. The yellow eyed bastard probably had it on him. Alright, plan B. He scanned the room a second time for anything he could use to pick a lock.

"Why don't you wear hairpins?"

Sam frowned, out of sight of his brother. His worry for Dean's mental condition ratcheted up another level. "What?"

"Hair's long enough for 'em," Dean continued mumbling as he moved away from the pillar and back into Sam's vision. He was patting himself down even as he crossed over to the half-standing dresser, and Sam realized he was looking for his lock picks. Dean mentally catalogued what he found - car keys in the wrong pocket _(if that fucking bastard touched my car I'm gonna make him glad demons don't have a god damn afterlife)_ , phone, and wallet. No lock picks, no weapons. "Would keep that shit out of your face at least."

"Gee, I'll keep it in mind for our next hunt," Sam answered back with an eye roll his brother didn't see.

Dean started pulling open drawers, running his hands along the surface top, and then dropping to the ground with a grunt as he searched for anything – nails, a thin piece of wire, a sturdy enough splinter, an old bobby pin left behind by some teenage girl losing her virginity to a pimply jock in an abandoned cabin in the woods. Anything. All the while, he muttered about his moose of a younger brother getting a haircut if he wasn't going to at least hide lock picks in that bird's nest he called hair. He then proceeded to ramble, more to himself, about how they could get him some real pretty ones. Sparkly. Dress him up right.

If looks could kill, Sam would have murdered his only chance at escape some time ago.

"Ha!" The hunter stumbled back to his feet with a noise of triumph immediately followed by a noise of pain. Dean swayed dangerously for a moment before he righted himself and headed back to his brother like he was right as rain. He was holding an old hair clip in his hand, a small bejeweled butterfly at the end suggesting it was less likely lost by some blushing virgin and more likely a pre-teen or single digit who'd come with her big sis or bro to the creepy cabin in the woods where the big kids hung out.

Dean disappeared back behind the pillar again, and Sam heard the telltale clicks and scrapes of his brother picking a lock. The larger man fidgeted in the chains, trying and failing to exercise patience. Dan knew what he was doing, and Sam would be free in just another couple seconds.

"Oh shit."

Sam tensed at the shaky whisper that came from his brother, all sounds from behind him ceasing. He tried to turn in the chains, to see past the pillar. "What? Did you drop it?"

He didn't know what it was; if it was his hunter's instinct suddenly screaming at him; if it was how well he knew his brother and the way Dean's breath shuddered as soon as the room had silenced; or maybe it was the way his brother had gone absolutely still. Whatever it was, Sam knew before his brother said it that they weren't alone in the cabin anymore.

"He's here."

"Well, look who's up and at 'em!"

Dean suddenly yelped, but before Sam could ask what happened, he felt an intense heat around his middle. He let out a cry of his own as the chains flashed burning red for a moment, sizzling against his flesh. The intense, burning heat vanished as quickly as it had come, but it accomplished Azazel's goal. Dean stumbled into Sam's field of vision, away from the padlock and his restrained brother.

Despite the fierce sting across his arms and chest, the sight of his older brother, mostly unharmed, added a modicum of relief to Sam's ratcheted tension. Dean stumbled another couple feet back, eyes darting around for a weapon.

"I should have known better than to underestimate that Winchester gumshoe."

Sam tried to turn against the pillar once again, straining to see the owner of the disembodied voice. Dean's hardened, slightly panicked gaze over his right shoulder told Sam the demon was probably just past the pillar, barely out of his view. There was something about not being able to see the bastard that made his helpless situation all the worse.

"Dean," he cautioned, voice strained. His brother was in serious danger here, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to help. The fact Azazel had left Dean untied once more poked at his attention and he tried to ignore all the very dark reasons his brain supplied for why the demon would do that.

His older brother had only a moment to shake his head minutely in Sam's direction before he was blasted back, flying across the length of the cabin to crash into the wall he had woken up against.

"Dean!"

The hunter managed to protect his head from the impact, forcing his chin to his chest to avoid adding another bump to the skull. His neck protested fiercely, but at this point he would take whiplash over a secondary concussion. Dean's vision still darkened momentarily and he started to slump forward, sliding off the wall, before an invisible pressure caught him and splayed him against the surface.

Azazel strolled across the room, bending down a few feet away from Sam to pick up the hair pin Dean had dropped in the sudden attack. He whistled merrily as he twirled the device in his hand. Both brothers watched, eyes wide, as the little pin lit up as red as the chains had, metal softening and then liquefying in the demon's grip. The molten material slipped through his fingers and splattered on the ground, butterfly jewel bouncing off the wood seconds later.

"That would have been inconvenient," the demon mentioned casually as he strolled across the room towards the pinned hunter. He paused before he reached him, glancing over his shoulder at the equally straining younger brother. Sam snarled at the sudden attention. Pale yellow eyes faded out to normal human pupils and darted down to the chains wrapped around his captive. "Sorry 'bout those, sport. Couldn't risk you biting the hand that feeds ya, and all."

Sam frowned at his words, but the glare in his eyes never lessoned as Azazel turned back to his brother. Dean tried to lean away from the demon, but his pinned position didn't allow for much movement, and all he managed was turning his head ever so slightly away from the yellow eyed bastard. Azazel reached out and Sam's heart leapt at all the ways the monster could hurt Dean.

"Why?" The words were out of his mouth before he'd registered them. All he had thought was he had to keep Azazel's attention on him. If he was talking to Sam, he wasn't hurting Dean. Hand still splayed towards his brother, the demon paused, glancing over his shoulder with a questioning brow. Sam swallowed thickly, his brother catching his eye and shaking his head. He ignored him. "Why did you kill Max? Wasn't he one of your…your kids?"

Azazel laughed, turning back to Dean. Sam's heart pounded, mouth opening to try again, but all the demon did was start rooting through his brother's pockets. "That sniveling brat?"

Dean squirmed under those hands, body twitching in result against the power pinning him to the wall. The demon ignored him for the most part, movements halting as his hand slipped into the human's front jean pocket. Dean stilled, body freezing up as the bastard grinned up at him with a malicious smile that absolutely did not make every muscle in his body shake and his stomach twist unpleasantly. He still had all those memories from Hell, he reminded himself. There was nothing this bastard could do to him that hadn't already been inflicted a dozen times over.

Azazel smirked as he slowly pulled out the hunter's phone, purposefully dragging out the movement before he spun back around to his real interest in all of this. Dean sagged against the wall and Sam glared fiercely at the demon who flipped open the device and started keying through the various menus.

"Sure, he was one of mine," Azazel continued, speaking directly to Sam though his gaze remained on the phone as he started scrolling through contacts. "But that whining mess of a human never stood a chance. I had hoped abusive parents would bring out some anger in the boy – real sociopathic tendencies, you know?"

Sam clenched his jaw as the demon prattled on about Max's life like it was an experiment gone wrong. Max had turned into a murderer, but Sam couldn't help but sympathize with what had driven the kid there. To listen to the yellow eyed monster so callously disregard the hardships _he'd_ put Max through…

How many more lives had that creature ruined?

"He couldn't even kill those abusive bastards without a push. Multiple pushes!" Azazel threw his arms out, as if he was the victim here. "I spent more time trying to train up that sniveling brat... Ah, well. He had his use in the end, mmh? Got you going, Sammy."

The demon waggled a finger in his direction, the same glee in his eye as had been there in the muddy church parking lot. But Sam wasn't paying attention to the demon. He turned wide eyes to his brother, breath slowing with realization. Azazel was the reason Max had moved early. Why Sam had had his vision sooner in the timeline than was right, why Cassie had called while they were already on the road. Azazel was their butterfly.

Sam could tell by the panic in his brother's gaze that that was absolutely not good news for them.

"Why?" Sam asked again, voice doubled in anger and desperation. He hated the latter, the plea that was included in the rage. But he wanted to understand, to comprehend what could possibly be worth running their lives twice over. Even if he already knew the answer, and still couldn't understand.

"Because I need that anger," Azazel responded easily, oblivious to the silent exchange between brothers. He was downright elated, like the answer was obvious but no less exciting. He pushed away from Dean, crossing the distance between the two. The phone was still in his hand, but Sam had captured his attention away from it for now. "That's the problem with you humans. You're like kicked dogs; always crawling back to daddy for approval. Too many of you spend years sniveling, begging for treats, scrambling to please the guy beating the crap out of you."

The demon laughed, inches away from the hunter's face. Sam had never wanted to punch someone so much in his life.

"I need someone who won't take it. Someone who's got the anger, the drive, the _balls_ , to stand above all that. Bite that hand that feeds you. Rip it right off." The demon turned away from the boy again, though didn't leave his side as he brought the phone back up. "Someone like you, Sammy."

"What?"

"Sure, the kid had spunk enough to ice his family, but it took him so damn long to do it!" Azazel kept on as if he hadn't heard Sam's breathless question. "I'm looking for someone whose anger always trumps the family card. And that's you, Sammy-boy."

He tapped the phone against the hunter's chest with a wink.

"Walked away from your father – your brother – more than once. Not afraid to take what you want, do what needs to be done. Blood ties be damned." Azazel sucked in and released a breath of air like a father would in the middle of a speech about his oldest son's recent achievements. The grin on his face was so sickeningly proud that Sam had to turn away from it.

"You're wrong."

"Am I?" The demon tilted his head, brow raised. "Demon blood don't add to you, Sammy. It only brings out more of what's already in there."

"Don't listen to him, Sam." The barked command drew both hunter and demon's attention back to the wall, where Dean remained pinned. His anger was focused solely on the demon, but his fierce gaze flickered to Sam, a promise in his eyes that the younger Winchester hardly understood, but instantly believed.

Azazel clucked his tongue in a moment of silence, then flipped the phone shut and strode across the room towards the older hunter. Dean pulled back as the murderer drew closer, pressing himself more into the wall than the demon already had him.

The grey blue eyes of his human form disappeared, replaced in a blink with the pale yellow irises that had been the last thing Mary Winchester ever saw. Dean clenched his teeth, staring at the demon that he swore, no matter what it cost this timeline, he would kill again.

A smile broke out across Azazel's face, and he raised the phone in his hand, waving it tauntingly. "You'll see soon enough."

He flipped the device open, standing back from the pinned hunter. With a single button press, he raised the phone to his ear, glancing over his shoulder at Sam and waggling his eyebrows in the younger Winchester's direction.

-o-o-o-

John spread the map across the hood of his truck, staring down at the continental United States and the maze of back roads and highways he'd endlessly traversed for twenty-two years in search of his prey. He slammed his fist down on the center of the map and the metal underneath vibrated with the hit. Tilting his head back, the former marine took in a deep, calming breath and forced himself to release the tension in his shoulders that crawled up his neck like a cancer.

He'd lost Yellow Eyes' trail. The last omens after he'd left his sons had been four states over in Ohio. But by the time he'd arrived, it was nothing but a regular demon, mulling about the town. John made swift work of it, but not before the hell spawn had spat that he knew all about his son. All about Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon blood.

 _'You don't even know what's coming, do you?'_

The thing had gone to hell laughing at him. John took in another breath and added a ten count. It should have gone screaming.

The hunter straightened his head slowly, rapping his knuckles against the map instead of punching it like his bunched up muscles wanted so badly to do. Part of him had thought, with the Colt tucked against his side as a reassuring weight, that his hunt was almost over. But now, it was like starting all over. The demon was making himself scarce. It had only been a couple of days, but in the last six months this thing hadn't stopped for even twenty-four hours, let along almost a week.

John gritted his teeth, hand resting on the hilt of the Colt, tucked into the waistline of his jeans. It was like the bastard knew he had it, and was purposefully hiding from him.

A ringtone cut through bitter thoughts, and John pulled his phone from his coat pocket with a sigh. Dean's name flashed on the small screen as he stared down at the device. He considered ignoring it, even turning the thing off. He knew his eldest would have nothing but angered words for him, and he didn't need to hear them right now or waste time getting in another fight.

But Sammy was traveling with Dean, and if something had happened… John huffed a breath, counted to ten, and raised the phone to his ear.

"Yeah?"

 _"John? Is that you?"_

The coy, taunting voice that rang slightly tinny through the small speaker was not his oldest son, and John straightened, fingers digging into the plastic edges of the device.

"Who is this?"

 _"Oh, I think you know. Still, I'll give you three guesses."_ The smug grin coming down the line was sickening to the hunter and he grit his teeth. He sure as Hell did know. Only question left was what that yellow eyed bastard was doing with his son's phone. _"Though, each guess you get wrong, Dean-O here's gonna pay for."_

"You touch my son and I'll kill you."

The demon laughed loudly, a false sound that turned John's stomach. _"John, John, John. You were gonna do that anyway. Or do you think I don't know about that special gun you have?"_

The hunter swallowed, hand curling around the hilt of the Colt protectively. His mind raced. Had the boys told the demon about it? Were they coerced into talking, or had the bastard already known about the gun?

 _"Word travels fast about things like that,"_ the demon drawled, answering the hunter's unvoiced question. _"Now! I'm sure you can imagine what comes next, Johnny-Boy. I want the gun; I have your children. Let's…make a trade, hm?"_

"I want to talk to Dean."

 _"Oh, I don't think Dean's earned speaking privileges. Hasn't been the model prisoner, you know. Tried to help his brother escape, keeps talking back."_ John's fist tightened on the hood of the car, map crinkling beneath his aching grip. _"I can still give you proof of life, though."_

John's breath left him like a punch to the gut as his eldest son's voice came through the line in a harsh, cut off grunt. The old marine could tell his son was holding back a hell of a lot more than some pained groan, and his heart hurt to think what that bastard could be doing to him.

 _"I don't think that was loud enough, Dean-O. Your dad wants to know you're alive. Let's try again."_

"No, wait-"

There was a distant crack down the line and this time Dean screamed. John had to lower the phone away from his ear. He raised his fist to his forehead, knocking against his own skull several times as he fought with every fiber of his being to stay in control of the mounting rage and panic.

 _"Hear that, John?"_

The hunter counted to ten and let out a breath, before he opened deadly calm eyes and raised the phone back to his ear. "Yeah, I heard."

 _"Good. So, Dean's alive and well. Mostly. And Sam's obviously fine; no need to hurt my favorite boy just yet."_

John clenched his teeth around his tongue, the sharp pain the only thing keeping him from promising that son of a bitch that it didn't matter where he went or who he used as a shield. He was going to die. Instead, he bided his time with his silence, despite every second of it that killed him.

 _"I want the Colt,"_ the demon soon enough continued once he realized he had the hunter's attention. He rattled off an address in northern Michigan, about four hours away from John's current position.

The hunter stared at the map still spread across the hood of the truck, corners curling in the gentle breeze. He tapped the phone with a single finger, plans rolling through his head.

 _"Did you hear me, John?"_ Dean made a pained noise in the background.

"Okay! I heard you. I'll bring you the colt." The hunter licked his lips, running a hand through his hair. "It's gonna take me about a day's drive to get there."

On the other end, the demon just hummed and his son cried out again. He could hear Sam yelling in the background. John's hand shook around the phone, but he willed his voice to remain steady and silently apologized to Dean for the bluff he would bear the brunt of.

"I'm halfway across the country, and I can't just carry a gun on a plane!" The thing about a bluff was it was only good if you played it all the way through, no matter the cost.

 _"That's okay."_ The demon sounded genuine, which immediately set off warning bells in the hunter's head. Dean stopped making that noise, though. His barely audible panting in the background at least confirmed he was still alive. _"Take all the time you need. I'll just be here with Dean. I'm sure we'll find ways to pass the time."_

The line clicked dead and John slammed the phone as hard as he could into the hood of the truck, denting one and shattering the screen of the other.

-o-o-o-

Sam clenched his teeth and kept his mouth shut, though just barely, as he searched the room desperately again and again for something – _anything_ – he could use to get the demon away from his brother. If he could wound Azazel enough, distract him enough to get Dean back up, maybe his brother could get away. Unfortunately, the demon had all but eliminated a repeat of their last escape attempt and Sam had little hope of them getting out together.

He would happily give his freedom if it meant that bastard didn't lay another hand on his brother.

The demon stepped away from Dean as he shut the phone, letting the hunter slide down the wall and crumple to the floor in a heap. Sam bit his tongue, straining against the chains as his brother groaned and didn't try to get up. His good arm was awkwardly wrapped across his chest to hold onto his left. The cast lay in pieces several feet away, and his previously injured arm now sported two breaks. The first fracture, having spent the last week healing as much as it could from the hunter's prior demonic encounter, had given easily beneath Azazel's tight grip. The second, clearly visible in the unnatural angle of Dean's wrist, had been delivered when the re-break was not been enough to make the hunter scream.

Dean didn't bother getting off the floor. Instead, he rolled onto his back, clutching the ruined limb as hard as he was clenching his teeth and focused on breathing through the pain. He'd had far worse.

"Well, that was fun." Azazel set the phone down on the dresser. He glanced over at Sam with a winning smile, and the hunter jerked in his chains.

"I'm going to kill you!"

"That'd be a neat trick." The demon turned his full attention on the young psychic, leaning back against the wobbly furniture and crossing his arms. A mock idea lit his face with all the sincerity of a lying rat, and he leaned forward far enough to reach behind him and pull a gun from his back. It was Dean's, the ivory laid grip a dead giveaway. He held it out in his open palm. "Here ya go. Make the gun float to you there, psychic boy."

Sam clenched his teeth, raising his chin against the demon's taunt. He couldn't help his eyes darting down to the weapon and back to steel blue irises.

Azazel just shrugged when he didn't take the bait. "Wouldn't have done you much good anyway, o' course. This here ain't a special gun. Not like the one your daddy's bringing me."

"Still would have put a smile on my face."

The demon turned slowly to Dean, who had managed to right himself up against the wall. He was still holding his broken arm – no point in pretending it wasn't what it was. But he looked up at Azazel with a glare and a grin that was practically trade-marked Dean Winchester.

"Bullet straight through one of those ugly ass eyes?" Dean let out a laugh, masterfully hiding the wince that followed as he jostled his limb. He kept that cocky grin locked on the demon looming above him. "Woulda done me some good."

"Is that so?" Azazel wrapped his hand around the grip of the gun, leveling it at the downed hunter. Dean stared straight down the barrel, aimed perfectly between his eyes.

"Dean." Sam pulled against his chains again, gnashing his front teeth together. He desperately switched between the yellow eyed bastard and his brother, praying to God he wasn't about to watch his brother take a headshot.

Would telekinesis work on a speeding bullet?

Sam tried to take a deep breath. The rational part of his brain fought for control over the panicking side. Dean had said they were both needed for the apocalypse. Sam by Hell, Dean with Heaven. That meant that the angels, even if they were dicks (Dean's words, not his), wouldn't let his brother die.

They couldn't. Right?

Only Dean had definitely skimmed over some things in the car on the way to Max's house. He hadn't been wrong – Dean, that is – about the trip being too short to cover it all. And it was more than just the twelve hours he had to explain it. It was the time Sam needed to assimilate it.

The younger hunter hadn't asked much more after the bare bones of the apocalypse were laid out before him. He'd had his questions about it, absolutely. But honestly? He needed half that ride just to process what he'd been told. Sam knew there were parts he didn't understand. Hell, he didn't understand most of it. He'd just wrongly assumed he'd have time to talk to his brother about everything he didn't know.

Like the fact that they both would obviously survive long enough to start the end of the world and then take down Lucifer. Dean had been clear on that part. They were both there to take down the devil they'd set free. So that meant they would be fine up until that point. They had to be. Neither Heaven nor Hell could afford to kill them if they were the only ones who could get that show on the road.

That was why Dean knew he could piss the demon off as much as he wanted, and he wouldn't take that shot. Right?

Azazel clucked his tongue and released the hammer of the gun. He grinned down at the older Winchester, who didn't so much as blink as the weapon was lowered away from him. Sam got out a single breath of relief before his big brother opened that damn mouth of his again.

"What? You don't have the balls if I'm not pinned the ceiling?" Dean let out a little laugh that was dark and dangerous. "Or is it cuz I'm not a woman?"

Oh, _hell_ , who was he kidding? Dean would run his mouth whether or not he had immunity. Dean would run his mouth right past immunity, do not pass Go, do not collect your free pass of _not dying_.

"Dean!"

Sam's warning went unheard as Azazel set the gun back on the dresser and Dean suddenly straightened against the wall, back rigid and head snapping upright. It was clear within seconds that he couldn't breathe, as his mouth flapped like a fish trying to suck in water where there was only air. Sam strained against the chains holding him. Dean's face started to redden, but it wasn't until his brother started sliding up the wall and towards the ceiling that true fear took hold.

Sam tried to tell himself again that this wasn't where his brother died, at least according to Dean and his 'first time around' crap. Of course, that voice was a tiny thing in comparison to the one screaming he was going to watch his brother die here and now if they kept making changes to the timeline.

Dean's head hit the ceiling, neck bending awkwardly as his body continued moving upward, transitioning onto the roof of the cabin. Sam thrashed against his restraints, his brother starting to panic. His face was an alarming shade of red, going purple and puffing up with the need for oxygen.

"Stop!" Sam finally yelled. "You can't kill him. You need him!"

The cabin silenced as Azazel halted, Dean stilling on the roof. The demon turned slowly to look at the younger hunter, a calculating and dangerous look in his eye. It was Dean's turn to utter a warning, though his was garbled by the fact he couldn't actually access any of the depleting air in his lungs.

"You need us both," Sam continued on, heedless of his brother's slightly panicked gaze in his direction. "John won't deal if you kill him. You won't get the Colt unless we're both still breathing, and you know it."

Yellow Eyes didn't respond, just continued to stare at the boy. Sam tilted his chin up, pushing back all those thoughts of alternate timelines and destinies. He focused all of his confidence into feeding the bluff, which really wasn't that much of a bluff after all.

"Without us as leverage, he'll just kill you instead." Sam narrowed his eyes at the demon, refusing to let so much as a tremor of adrenaline affect his voice or his body. "You need him."

Dean hit the floor, unable to hold back a sharp cry as he broke a ten foot fall with a twice-over broken limb. But he was breathing – hacking, really, after spending so long without oxygen – and that was all Sam cared about for now.

"Fair point, Sammy-boy." Azazel turned his full attention on his favorite kid, who sagged against the pillar in relief. The demon ignored the heaving man behind him. He'd deal with him in good time. "I can't blow the grand finale before the guest of honor shows."

Dean gave a grunt and a strangled, "oh come on" as he was flung back up, off the floor and pinned to the wall once more. He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'one-trick pony' but if Azazel heard it, he didn't bother responding. Instead, the demon moved right into the hunter's space, stopping only once his face was scant inches from the hunter's own.

"Dude, personal space," Dean mumbled, and winced as a spike of something angry flashed through his chest.

Azazel's gaze flickered yellow.

"But I bet," he continued on as if their conversation hadn't paused so he could toss the hunter around some more. He raised his arm and Dean's abused arm scraped up the wall in tandem, the hunter wincing with every jostle. "Big brother can take one hell of a beating and keep right on kicking. Can't you, boy?"

Dean set his jaw. He pulled his head off the wall as much as he could, fighting the demon's overpowering strength with sheer stubborn will. The man from the future locked eyes with the demon that had nothing on him when it came to surviving torture.

"Gimme your best shot."


	30. Season 1: Chapter 29

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Dean's back to swearing, but can you really blame the poor kid? Sam's not waiting on John Winchester for an escape plan, Azazel's got some peculiar things to ponder, and we finally find out what the hell is up with Dean's chest._

 _ **-Actual Chapter Warnings:** As you can imagine, similar to the last two. We're ramping it up a bit more. Still gore, torture, murder: the general dark, ugly things. Solid T rating!  
_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 29

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam's voice was hoarse and his throat raw by the time Azazel stepped away from his brother. He released Dean from the wall, and the hunter didn't bother trying to hold himself up. He crumpled to the ground with a soft sound that hurt Sam deep in his chest. But he pushed that to the side. Dean was still breathing. He could work with that.

Yellow Eyes had ignored every plea, scream, and demand sent his way while he gave his brother the beat down of his life. An hour in he switched from fists to what must have been psychic knives or claws of some sort, since the older Winchester's skin split with every rake of Azazel's fingers. Dean took it all with impressive reservation. Sam had never seen anything like it in all his years of hunting monsters and killing things, and he certainly had never seen it in his brother.

Dean was like steel; cold and clinical about the torture being inflicted on him like he was outside of it all. It obviously hurt, something the older hunter didn't waste energy hiding. He screamed when he needed to and didn't hide behind some macho bravado act like Sam expected. It only took about fifteen minutes for the young Winchester to realize that his brother – the Dean from the future – had been through this before. Perhaps not exactly this, as Dean definitely would have mentioned them being kidnapped by the yellow eyed psycho, but torture certainly.

What might have been comforting in any other sense – the idea that Dean could handle this – hand handled this before – only made Sam more desperate to get the demon away from him. He never wanted to hear those pained noises coming from his big brother again. But for all Sam's begging and threatening, Azazel refused to turn his attention away from the older Winchester. He took a break at one point to give Sam a wink and the reassurance that he'd never hurt his prize show pony. Sam had only screamed louder.

"Ha. H-He definitely has the m-mane for it," Dean chuckled, half delirious from the last round of headshots Azazel delivered without reserve.

"Dean. Shut up."

Sam didn't know how long they'd been in that cabin by the time Azazel finally backed off. He didn't know how much longer they had to wait for their Dad to arrive. If he had to guess, he'd say a couple of hours had passed, though it felt like days at that point.

"Entertaining as this has been, boys," Azazel began conversationally, a step back from the crumpled, bleeding hunter. "I need to step out for a moment. Gotta prep for the main event!"

He picked up Dean's jacket, which he'd cut off not long after the invisible claws came out, and wiped his blood splattered face with it. The hunter made a gargled sound at the action, glaring at the man with all that he was worth. That was his father's jacket, damn it. Not that there was much left of it now.

Yellow Eyes just smiled, dropped the battered material next to the hunter, and strolled past Sam and out of his range of vision. The sound of an old door creaking open and shutting hard rattled through the single room, and Sam finally let out a shaky breath.

"Is he gone?" he asked, just to be sure since he couldn't see the second half of the room. Dean nodded, though Sam took a moment to consider how good his brother's vision could even be, given one eye was swelled completely shut and the other kept blinking to keep out blood from a cut to his brow.

He trusted him, though, so he took his word. "Can you move?"

Dean made a sort of half-assed grunt that Sam easily translated into _'if I have to_.' Not the answer he'd been hoping for, but the one he'd been expecting. He knew at least one of Dean's legs was broken. Straight through the femur, one of the most painful bones to break, and Azazel had snapped it like a toothpick. Dean took it like a champ, just groaning about recovery time, thigh-high casts, and damn it, not again.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked softly, unable to block the sound of his brother's leg cracking in two playing on a loop through his brain.

"I'll live," Dean mumbled, spitting out a mouthful of blood. He sent his brother a half grin, which lost most of its intended effect given his teeth were stained as red as the rest of him. "Had way worse than this, Sammy."

"Yeah," the younger man answered weakly. He'd figured that much out on his own, but was dreading the story behind it. "Any ideas on getting out of here?"

With Dean's leg busted and the rest of him on the sure path of eventual exsanguination, Sam knew the man wasn't walking out, even if he could convince his big brother to leave him behind.

"Dad'll think of something."

 _Shit_. Sam stared at the man without bothering to hide the worry or the fear. Dean always had an idea, or the confidence of an idea yet to form but surely coming. It was something Sam had always admired about his brother; the stubborn mule didn't give up, no matter the odds. Admitting now that their best bet was waiting until John showed up meant the hunter knew he was benched.

"Yeah, okay." Sam didn't try getting any more out of his brother, whose wet breaths eventually evened out as he rested against the wall. He let Dean take the much needed, well-deserved respite. The younger Winchester watched his brother's bloodied chest rise and fall for several comforting moments that he desperately needed before he put himself to work.

Sam's gaze turned to the gun, still sitting atop the dresser beside Dean's phone. The restrained hunter didn't know how much time they had before the demon returned, but he wasn't going to waste it by waiting.

-o-o-o-

The dilapidated and somewhat listing shed stood – sort of – a good fifty yards away from the old hunting cabin. It had once been used for storing a winter's worth of firewood and drying meats for the family that lived in the house. It got them through the desolate, freezing, deadly winters of northern Michigan. Of course, the last time a family had lived in that pathetic excuse for a home, it had been frontier land. Nowadays the shed had a gaping hole in the roof with rot eating away at what was left, a door that hung off its hinges and had to be roped closed if anyone bothered to close it at all, and the whole thing would, in all likelihood, collapse atop itself within a year.

However, it did still work as a makeshift holding cell for three humans dumb enough to spend a chilly May night camping out in an abandoned cabin in the woods.

Azazel unhooked the rope holding the shed door closed, allowing the monstrosity to swing open with a distressing groan of rusting metal and rotting wood. He stepped into the dark space, glancing down as his foot landed on a squishy, uneven surface that crunched beneath his boot.

The yellow eyed demon gazed down in distaste at the lifeless teenage male underneath his foot. The boy had attempted – valiantly, he supposed – to defend his girlfriend and the young child, a sister perhaps, that had been with them when the demon whisked into the cabin.

They'd been in sleeping bags, with a camping stove between them and marshmallows of all things roasting over the open flame. Azazel had allowed himself a moment to gag at the hallmark scene before snapping the boy's neck.

A whimper brought him away from the warm and fuzzy memory. He grinned at the frightened thing huddled in the corner of the shed. Tears streaked down her pretty little face and she turned away with a flinch as the demon transferred his weight to the foot pressed atop the dead boy's body. His ribs gave with a satisfying crunch, and Azazel stepped off the broken meatsuit and swept towards the girl.

She struck out, screaming, as he grabbed at her and hauled her off the dirty floor. The good thing about a dilapidated shed fifty yards from the house was the fact that its current occupants were unlikely to hear the fuss. Not that they could do anything about it, even if they did hear her mewling. But hunters were such pathetically noble things. He wouldn't put it past the Winchesters to figure out a daring escape just so they could save some crying bitch.

"What did you do with my sister?" The thing sobbed and squealed in his arms, snot and salt water slobbering up her face. She clutched a small hair pin in her hand, a bejeweled butterfly attached at the end. Azazel tilted his head at the trinket, then stretched his face into a grin.

"I had to make a call." He tightened his grip around the teen's bicep and hauled her towards the shed door. "Unfortunately for you, I have to make another."

-o-o-o-

John Winchester wrung the steering wheel beneath a white knuckled grip as he crossed the Michigan border. Another hour more. He closed his eyes briefly, thoughts focused on his sons surviving long enough for him to get there. They just had to survive another hour.

He glanced at the old gun sitting on the passenger seat, long barrel shaking with the vibrations of the engine and the bumps of the road as he flew down the I-75. The hunter wrung the steering wheel again as he turned his eyes back to the road. A light rain started, streaking drops across his windshield at eighty miles per hour.

Just another hour and he'd be there.

 _Hang on, boys. I'm coming._

-o-o-o-

The blood bubbled in its chalice a final time before going silent and still. Azazel set the cup down beside the unmoving body he'd drained for its contents. His daughter still hadn't checked in, despite her last call informing him she was closing in on the Winchesters. That was some time ago and he had no doubt she was dead, probably by way of that fancy gun John Winchester would soon deliver to him.

The Baku they hired to find that particular hunter hadn't been heard from for some time now, either. Crowley hardly seemed to care, but Azazel found curiosity in the beast's disappearance. He did nott often bother with the lesser things that roamed the earth, but even he knew the Baku were not killable, at least not by man. Not even by a man armed with the Colt.

Given how persuasive a salesmen the King of the Crossroads could be, when properly incentivized that is, Azazel found it unlikely the dream beast would wander off, job incomplete and sans whatever promised reward.

Which meant that peculiar things were happening. Too many, he believed, to be of coincidence. His best daughter was dead, the eldest Winchester was being fed information on Hell's movements faster than Hell was able to collect information on his, their carefully laid and almost fool-proof plan to spring Lucifer from his cage continued to derail at the simplest of steps, the Colt surfaced with perfect timing for both themselves and their enemies, and a dream beast the Winchesters had no way of killing seemed to be quite killed.

Azazel stared at the blood, silent within its chalice now that Lilith was no longer on the other end of the call. What was even more peculiar was the recent development she relayed to him. It had taken time for their scattered demons to regroup and report in - more time of course to torture the real story out of them and confirm its legitimacy - but apparently that pesky Pearly White Gate was no longer shut. It had creaked open, just for a moment, earlier this week.

Of all weeks, really, _this_ week was...well, it was more than peculiar, that was for certain. Unfortunate, really. It was going to be problematic if Heaven joined this fight early. It did not, however, explain how they seemed to have already had a hand in it for six months.

The Prince of Hell rubbed his hand along his chin in thought, but pulled away when his fingers ran across something cold and wet. He stared at the digits in the moonlight; Dean Winchester's blood was smeared across the tip of one. He must have missed some when he'd used the kid's jacket as a wipe down. Pale yellow eyes gazed past his fingers, focusing on the blood sitting in the silver cup next to the corpse it once belonged to.

A silly little thought occurred to him. One might even call it peculiar.

"Tasted like righteousness, huh?" He wiggled his fingers in the moonlight. With possibility niggling at his brain, Azazel raised his hand to his lips and took a taste of the Righteous Man's blood.

-o-o-o-

"Dean. Wake up."

The voice was far away, but still loud enough to disturb his peaceful lull of oblivion. First, he tried to ignore it. But the voice was insistent, and growing worse. What had started soft was becoming demanding, then indignant. So the second thing Dean did was try to turn away from the sound, an action that instantly provided the opposite effect he was hoping for.

Pain flared through… shit, _everything!_ Green eyes snapped open – well, one snapped open and the other painfully reminded him that his face was currently hamburger meat. He hissed as multiple fractures flared up throughout his body, which tried to react to the pain in his face by raising his arms to it. The pain in his arms made him jerk forward, and he really quickly came to the conclusion that there wasn't a single part of him that didn't hurt.

Well, he thought as he groaned and leaned back against whatever surface had been previously supporting him. His toes didn't really hurt. His head definitely did, given the downright giddiness that came with realizing his toes were fine.

"Dean."

The hunter suppressed another pained sound and lifted his head – _slowly_ – to search for his brother's voice. It took a moment, head still swimming and vision absolutely fucked between the swelling, the blood, and the concussion. Concussions. Pretty sure he'd compounded them by now. Eventually he settled his single eye on his brother, chained in the center of the room a good ten feet away.

"Hey, Sammy." He had the brief thought that he should say something cooler than that. Maybe poke at the fact his brother was strapped up like a dungeon bondage porno gone terribly wrong, nose dribbling blood like he'd been sucker punched by a pussy who couldn't even hit hard enough to bruise. But chuckling hurt, as he was now learning, and something vaguely resembling self-preservation whispered in his head that mouthing off meant more pain.

"You're taking damsel in distress to all knew levels." Right, like he had _ever_ listened to that voice when it did decide to pipe up.

Sam rolled his eyes, but there was relief in the twitch of his lips. His eyes were serious, though, and Dean tried to focus for their sake. His kid brother was holding himself really stiff, one hand fisted at his side, the other extended as far as it could go with the chains pinching at his red, irritated elbow. The kid's hand was splayed out and trembling.

Dean frowned at it. Something clawed at his foggy brain but failed to break through.

"I need you to focus," Sammy was saying, and it took a moment and a heavy blink for Dean to realize he was talking to him. "Do you remember where the padlock is on the chains?"

The man from the future frowned further, stopping only when pain pushed through his head at the pull of those muscles. Instead, he stared at his brother as his thoughts swayed like his vision.

"Padlock?"

"Yeah." Sammy sounded a little desperate, like he did when they were on a time limit. "Can you describe where it is? Exactly."

Dean frowned again, despite the pain that came with it. He wasn't really following, but sure, he could do that. He remembered making his way across the swirling room after the first concussion – definitely sure he had a second one now – and following his brother's restraints around to the back.

"Dead center, about….an inch above your bellybutton?"

Sam's eyes slid away from his brother, focusing on something else. His hand twitched and that thing trying to claw at Dean's memory doubled its efforts. There was a familiar click and the sound of metal pressing against metal. Dean's curiosity peaked and he turned his head to follow the sound. He couldn't spot what made the noise, though. Sam frowned, head tilting slightly. He move his hand again, and the sound came once more, but heavier this time. Thicker metal, Dean's ailing mind supplied.

The kid suddenly grinned. "Found it."

Dean was about to ask what he'd found when the sound of a gun going off ripped through the room. The older Winchester raised his arms on instinct, head turning to the side as he closed his eyes. The movement ended up half aborted as pain flared through both limbs and he gasped, pressing himself back against the wall as his vision whited out for a minute.

Fuck the gunshot, the only thing a bullet could do to him now was end the goddamn pain.

Hands were grabbing at him before his vision cleared, and he stupidly tried to fight them off, resulting in more agony. He was doubled over trying to breath and repeating a mantra of ' _don't move your arms, dumbass'_ by the time he realized it was Sam's hands gripping his shoulders – some of the only undamaged parts of his torso currently – and his voice urging him to get up.

"Oh, fuck," he mumbled as he managed to clamp down on the waves of agony going through him and instead forced his eyes open.

"We gotta go," Sam spoke urgently right next to him, but his voice sounded apologetic. Dean's concussed brain couldn't quite grasp why, but the answer came to him a second later when his brother hauled his broken body up.

"Oh, _fuck_!" he cried again, gritting his teeth. Forget waves of agony, this was pure hell.

 _You've been through worse. Suck it up, Winchester_. The voice in his head was cold and harsh, but it also spoke the truth and Dean knew it, even if he didn't know much else in that moment. So he took a heaving breath and did as he was told. Sam slung Dean's unbroken arm around his samsquatch shoulders, pulling on his bruised torso and broken ribs, but he sucked air through his teeth and fought through the pain.

Things weren't making much sense to him right then, but he knew Azazel was coming back. Sure, it took him a few moments longer than it should have to remember who the hell Azazel was, but bite him. Two concussions, people!

"Now, that _was_ a neat trick."

Both hunters froze, half because Sam had been all of their driving motion, and half because a little voice in Dean's head supplied the identity of the owner of that voice and the rest of him supplied the swear words and sudden muscle rigidity.

Sam raised the gun in his hand – when the hell had the kid gotten his gun? – and fired repeatedly into the demon. Azazel didn't bat an eye or bother dodging. His shirt and flannel ripped with every bullet, but there was no blood and he barely staggered a step. Soon enough, Dean's chamber was empty and Sam lowered the gun, the fierceness in his eyes hiding the panic beyond.

"Ouch." Azazel tilted his head and the gun flew from Sam's hand, skidding across the room and into the far wall. Dean went next, with Sam crying out as his brother was ripped from his grip and pinned back to his favorite spot in the whole cabin.

Yellow Eyes flicked his wrist even as Sam spun to face him. The kid was dragged back to the pillar and pinned to the wood. The chains and busted padlock, bullet still lodged in the shattered metal, remained limp on the floor. Azazel kept both boys restrained with his stupid demon powers alone, strolling into the room and up to the dresser.

He set a large mason jar of dark liquid on the surface and Sam stopped struggling, breath stolen from his body at the sight of another container of demon blood.

-o-o-o-

"What is that."

Azazel had given them a moment to gather their wits, standing beside the dresser with neither words nor expectations. Yet, at least. Dean used his minute to try and remember how to breathe without throwing up. Sam needed every second of the allotted time to rip his gaze from that sickeningly red liquid.

Now Yellow Eyes focused his attention on the young man in the center of the room. The hunter looked for all the world like he wanted to push himself straight through that pillar and disappear entirely. Azazel wouldn't be surprised if Sam stayed pressed to that surface, demonic power holding him there or not.

"Come on, Sammy," he admonished lightly, a single brow raised at the boy. He placed a light hand atop the jar. "You already know the answer."

He delighted in watching the hunter's Adam's apple bob up and down.

"No." Sam lifted his chin, lower jaw trembling but expression resolute despite the obvious fear and, Azazel suspected, slight withdrawal.

"You sure, kiddo?" The demon looked him up and down, and Sam clenched his jaw until it ached. Azazel made a face, bobbing his head back and forth in thought. "That last bout with the gun and the chains? I'm betting that about drained the tank. Am I right?"

Sam held firm, refusing to blink or even think about how keeping that pistol afloat long enough to find the padlock and fire had almost made him black out.

"You know how I know?" The demon grinned, nodding slightly as if encouraging Sam to play along. When he didn't, the demon went on anyway, tapping the side of his nose. "You're bleeding again, sport. That stopped for a while, didn't it?"

He kept right on grinning and nodding, an ecstatic look in his eye. He tapped his fingers along the lid of the mason jar. "See, with a dose like this, you're getting strong enough to survive those pushes. But without more…"

Azazel clucked his tongue and shook his head slowly, gaze once more admonishing.

"No."

The demon sighed and turned away from the young hunter. "Alright, then. You're smart enough to know how these things work, Sammy."

Sam's heart stuttered as Azazel reached out and wrapped a hand around Dean's arm. The man had been silently recuperating from his most recent reintroduction to the wall. While following the conversation the best he could through an addled brain, ears ringing for reasons he didn't even know any more, and the pain of his broken body subjected to the steady, heavy pressure of Azazel's power, Dean wasn't fully paying attention. His focus did shift a little more to the present when that cold grip dug into his fractured forearm though.

"Stop!" Sam yelled as his brother cried out. The sound swiftly cut off and all Dean did was groan and huff through clenched teeth. Some focus returned to his brother's eyes as he glared at the demon with everything he had left. Which, Sam was terrified to admit, wasn't much.

"I may need him breathing," Yellow Eyes continued conversationally, glancing over his shoulder at his real interest, "but he doesn't have to be in one piece."

"I'm already not in one piece," Dean muttered, though he instantly regretted it when Azazel applied more pressure. Still, never let it be said that Dean Winchester backed down from a fight. Or an opportunity to piss in the face of the demon who destroyed his family. "I swear to God if you force that shit down his throat-"

"What are you and _God_ gonna do about it?" Azazel tightened his grip and Dean had half a mind to tell him that God might not do much, but he sure as hell would. Soon as his dad showed up with that gun. "And I'm not gonna have to force anything. He's going to drink it all on his own, aren't ya Sammy?"

Sam tried to keep his focus on the demon, but he couldn't help his eyes sliding to that jar of blood and back again.

"Sam, no." The distressed command from his brother was more of a plea than anything, but Sam ignored it as he glanced over at the blood once more. He didn't need the older hunter to tell him what to do, whether or not future Dean thought it was the right call. Still, Dean shook his head from his position against the wall. "I can take it."

He didn't need the order, or the reassurance, or the decision made for him. All Sam needed was the memory of his brother's voice telling him everything he would come to be, everything he'd come to do, and all because of that viscous red liquid sitting ten feet from him. He didn't need Dean to make his choices for him; he was _not_ going to become that Sam.

"You heard my brother." Sam tilted his chin up defiantly. "No."

Across the room from him, Azazel hummed, hand still poised around Dean's forearm. Sam prepared to hear yet another bone snapping in two, but the demon just stood there, a thoughtful look on his face. "I did hear him. Really, I've got some questions about that."

Dean let out a surprised little yelp as he was suddenly released from the wall. Yellow Eyes took a step back and to the side as the hunter's feet fell the inch or so to the ground and he staggered under his own weight. Dean hissed, immediately shifting off of his broken leg, though the other was a mess of bedraggled cuts and wasn't much better. He ended up supporting most of himself with the wall, and some masochistic part of his brain wished the demon would go back to holding his body up for him.

"See, I've been thinking. You're taking this whole torture thing really well." Azazel crossed his arms in contemplation, demeanor totally at ease. Both humans struggled with the sudden civil and downright surreal turn to the conversation. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you've been through something like it before."

Dean practically swallowed his tongue, biting down on the muscle in order to keep himself from sniping back that if this is what Azazel called torture he should try an hour with Alistair. Cold fingers gripped his chin, lifting his head. Dean's vision swam but he blinked his way through it with his good eye.

"Only, I do know better." Azazel stared at the hunter like he was trying to see straight through him. It was like a perversion of Cas's angel gaze, and Dean's chest flared indignantly at the notion. "You've never been in this much pain before."

The hunter snorted, but caught himself with a hiss as the demon's hand tightened around his face.

"We've been watching you since Mommy ate it on the ceiling." Azazel smirked at the way that jaw trembled beneath his fingertips. He imagined Dean would like nothing more than to bite his hand clean through if he could. "We watched both of you. So I know what I'm talking about when I say this should be breaking you."

The demon pulled away with an air of displeasure, pushing Dean's chin to the side even as he released him. "At least, more than it is."

"You don't know shit about me," Dean spat, turning his head back to glare at the thing that dared to touch him, that dared to think he knew what could break him. "And that'll be one of the last mistakes you ever make."

The demon made a noncommittal sound, not really listening. "You know, my daughter told me something interesting."

"Your daughter?"

Azazel turned towards Sam, almost like he forgot the other man was in the room. "Yes, the demon I'm sure you killed sometime in the last week. She was mine."

Sam stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

"What? You think you're the only one that can have a family?"

The broken hunter behind him snorted again, and he lashed out with his hand to deliver a strike to the man's bleeding torso. He cried out, but it petered into a hiss and then a full blown chuckle.

"I forgot about that," Dean muttered, lifting his head. He was smiling, teeth red with his own blood, yet the shit eating grin stayed firmly in place. Azazel regarded him with disgust. He struck again and Dean doubled over, sliding an inch down the wall.

"You think that's funny? That was my child. How would you feel if I killed your family?" Dean made a gurgling noise as Azazel caught him by the neck and hauled him back to his feet. "Oh, that's right. I forgot. I _did_."

The two stayed locked in a standoff, the hunter biting his tongue against every instinct to answer back, and the demon daring him to with ever tightening fingers around his throat.

"What did Meg say to you?"

Both hunter and demon turned, Azazel's grip lessening ever so slightly. Sam stared at them, eyes darting from one to the other. Dean had killed Meg right after announcing he was from the future. So there was no way that's what she could have told Azazel. Right?

The demon pulled away again and Dean let out a frustrated grunt as he caught himself on the wall. Honestly, hold him up, don't hold him up. Whatever, man, as long as the damn demon just made up his mind already.

"She said your brother tasted like righteousness." The demon announced, rather randomly for the two humans who glanced at each other with equal expressions of confusion. "When she kissed you, Dean-O, that first time I sent her after you. _You_ said she tasted like sulfur, and _she_ told me you tasted like righteousness. Honestly, I thought it was funny."

He chuckled, genuinely amused. It died off, however, when he realized his audience didn't seem to be in on the joke. Azazel sighed. Inside jokes were no fun when only you and a handful of top ranking demons knew the punchline. Especially when said punchline was standing right in front of you.

"I didn't think much of it. She always was a bit whiney. But then, peculiar things started happening. And you," he flicked Dean in the forehead, causing the hunter to jerk back, "suddenly turned into Superman. At least for a hunter, anyway."

"He's always been a good hunter," Sam snapped back defensively, snarling against the pressure that kept him pinned to the pillar.

"Good, yes. But this?" Azazel raised a brow in the younger brother's direction. "Spotting our double agent before the big event? A magical gun no one's seen in a century? Let's not forget the sudden willingness to offer baby Sammy's soul as a bargaining chip for one little woman."

Sam hissed at the mention of Jess, face reddening as he pushed and pushed against the demon's power. But he could tell that his own strength, that vibration beneath his skin, was almost gone. His eyes darted to the jar blood once more.

"You've always been a good hunter, Dean. Better than your Daddy, for sure." Azazel snagged Dean's chin once more, tilting his head up to meet his one eye. "But suddenly, you're just a little _too_ good. And I have to wonder why that is."

Steel blue eyes blinked yellow, then drifted down to stare at Dean's chest. The hunter's swimming mind couldn't fathom what the hell the dude was looking at, and honestly couldn't put more effort into it than a quip about where his eyes were. If the darkening edges of his vision were any indication of his current state, he wasn't going to make it through much more of this scintillating conversation.

Azazel ignored his comment, eyes still focused on the boy's chest, searching for something he didn't have the power to see anymore.

"Do you believe in angels?"

Dean managed not to suck in a breath of air mostly through luck. His hearing was sort of going in and out, and while he'd love to claim he had super ninja spy skills and a hell of a poker face that kept him from giving away the spike of fear that shot through him, it was mostly because he registered the question several seconds after Azazel had already moved on. He didn't dare meet Sam's wide-eyed gaze, though.

"Our scouts on Earth reported one making a run for your friend's house. Bobby Singer, isn't it? Well, the halo didn't stay long – blasted out of there almost as quick as it came. Why do you think it would do that?"

The man from the future honestly had no fucking clue. Mostly because he had no idea what the demon was talking about. No angel had stopped by Bobby's for a visit - at least not one they were aware of. The hunter breathed through his nose, mostly to keep his burning lungs and aching chest cavity under control. His nose had pretty much gone to shit: almost certainly broken and definitely clogged with blood. It was just as good as a paper bag for his hyperventilating system and panicking brain.

Dean refused to look over at his brother. He knew the question Sam would be asking with his eyes and Dean honestly wasn't sure he could keep from answering it. Not that he knew the answer.

' _Cas?'_

His chest ached in response, and his uninjured hand twitched with the need to rub at his sternum.

"Yeah, sure, pal," he managed to say instead, pushing thoughts of the angel as far from his mind as he could. Personally, he should be getting a damn Oscar for the way his voice stayed steady and even sounded like his usual, sarcastic self. "I thought I was the concussed one. There's no such thing as angels."

"Ah, well. You may not believe in them." Azazel's yellow eyes tracked back up to his face. He licked his lips, as though remembering the taste of something. "But I think one of them believes in you. And I wonder what he could have left behind to make your blood taste so…disgustingly righteous."

The demon pulled his arm straight back, close to his side with his palm turned inward and hand flat and rigid. Sam had half a second to wonder what on earth Azazel was talking about – was he talking about Castiel? – before the demon plunged his hand and arm straight through his brother's chest.

Sam screamed, but it was nothing compared to what Dean did. The hunter's voice was raw and shattered with unmanageable pain. His eyes were blown wide and his body tried to double over, but had nowhere to go with the demon taking up new residence in his chest cavity. Sam all but started hyperventilating, certain that Azazel had punched straight through his brother's ribcage, maybe even going after Dean's heart like he'd seen a werewolf do on a hunt gone terribly wrong when he was eleven.

But Dean kept screaming, which meant he kept breathing, kept _living_. His voice eventually cut out due to the fact that his brain overloaded on the sheer amount of pain signals it was receiving and his throat closed up. There was no blood, no splatter that should have come naturally with a giant hole punched through a human's chest. Azazel didn't pull back, didn't rip out his brother's still beating heart like something out of a terrible sci-fi movie. Sam kicked and screamed against his bonds, but he kept his eyes locked on his brother's face. As long as Dean was clenching his teeth, skin reddening, and sweat and tears trickling down, he was still alive.

Dean, for his part, couldn't breathe. And yeah, that may be because a demon was elbow-deep in his chest cavity where his lungs normally resided, but he had a feeling it had more to do with the seizing pain rippling through every fiber in his being. His nerves were on fire, his brain could barely function under the onslaught, and he had one single thought circling his brain over and over again that he couldn't seem to shake.

 _Damn it all to hell, I actually feel bad for putting soulless Sam through this._

No one, not even dickless, soulless, robotic not-brothers deserved this level of agony.

He had no idea what Azazel was looking for with a soul-search. A panicking brain managed to remind him this could let the time-traveling cat out of the bag, but it wasn't like he could do anything to stop it. The clawing hand went deeper, and Dean honestly wanted to die. Frozen fingers that burned like dry ice rooted around in his chest, igniting flares and setting his torso afire. They wiggled where they didn't belong, where there wasn't room for them. The pressure started to build beneath his ribs as the demon went deeper into his being.

Abruptly, it all stopped. There was a single moment of peace; a revitalizing breath of air filled his screaming lungs; a second of eerie silence soothed his aching head. Dean's chest went cold, but not in the ghost right behind you going for the kill kind of cold. It was opening the freezer and sticking your head inside on a hot day. Refreshing. Invigorating. Relief from the fire and flames.

Then Azazel reached out and touched it and the calm exploded.

-o-o-o-

Sam didn't know what happened. One second, his brother was choking on screams so painful he couldn't get them past his throat. Azazel's whole arm was buried in his brother's chest in a metaphysical manner that only ghosts were capable of. Then Sam's vision – the entire cabin – was rocked by an explosion of white-blue light.

The hunter slammed his eyes shut against the onslaught, but the blast from the explosion caught him across the chest and he was ripped away from the pillar and the power holding him there. Sam went cartwheeling through the air, further back into the cabin. He landed hard, twisting in a way that made his back muscles scream. The light faded, leaving Sam gasping for breath on the cabin floor, fingernails digging into the dirt-streaked, rotting wood.

He looked up, limbs shaking from adrenaline and fading pain. It took a second for his vision to clear from the exposure. Azazel was sprawled a couple feet in front of him, just starting to pick himself up. He was laughing as he climbed to his feet. Dean was collapsed once more against the wall, legs sprawled out in front of him, arms limp at his sides, head lolled to the left. He wasn't moving.

"Dean!" Sam scrambled to his feet, but Yellow Eyes flung out a hand and Sam found himself careening through the air once more, slamming into side wall of the cabin. His back protested, but he hardly felt it. The young hunter struggled against his invisible confines that he was quickly growing sick of, desperate to get to Dean and at least confirm his brother was still breathing.

"Well, that was refreshing!" Azazel's eyes were still glowing yellow, but there was a crazed gleam to them as he raised his arm. Sam's heart stuttered along with his lungs. The limb was charred – blackened beyond recognition – from his fingertips to mid bicep. Where the sleeve of his shirt had been before there was nothing; charred bits of flannel stuck to his melted flesh like a sick rendition of a skin graph.

The hunter turned away from the grotesque sight, fearful eyes searching his brother. He stopped breathing altogether when the same burns were evident in a blast pattern across Dean's chest.

"Dean?" The whisper was a scared little thing coming from a nine-year old boy during his first hunt, when his brother had taken a hit from a ghost straight into a tombstone and didn't get back up. Sam shuttered his eyes, shoving that little boy back down. "Dean, get up!"

But he didn't get up. He didn't move, and Sam couldn't tell from his pinned position against the wall if his brother was even breathing. Azazel was still laughing, indifferent to the useless, crippled limb or the unknown state of his captive.

"Oh, I didn't know the haloes had it in them," he announced loudly, finally lowering his ruined arm that no amount of power short of a soul exchange could heal. He moved towards the downed man, towering over his slumped form. The last embers of blue light were fading from the hunter's chest. The glow died out, leaving cloth and skin blackened from the defensive blast caused by a sliver of grace hidden away in the kid's soul. "You may not be one of mine, bucko, but you're somebody's alright."


	31. Season 1: Chapter 30

_**-Summary:** It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns:** This marks the end of season one! Honestly, some days I can't believe we made it. We rounded out with six more chapters and forty thousand words more than I anticipated. Go us! It has totally been a team effort, as I could not have been as dedicated to this story without fan support. _

_Thank you so much everyone who joined us this far, whether you were with us from the start, binged in the middle, or managed this beast just now. You ALL rock, and I appreciate your interest, excitement, and_ _especially_ _your comments._

 _Here. We. Go!_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (this Time Around)**

Chapter 30

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The demon left them alone in the cabin once more, probably to address the fact that half his arm was burned to a crisp, scaly flesh hanging off his limb like some sort of sick Halloween yard decoration. He didn't go far; Sam could hear him just outside the cabin. The hunter's limbs came free of the oppressive pressure of Azazel's power the moment the door shut, and he stumbled off the wall he'd been pinned to.

Sam didn't stop to question his newfound freedom. At this point, their captor had demonstrated quite clearly that an unfacilitated escape was unlikely. It was something Sam could stop and consider after he'd made sure his brother was still alive.

The younger Winchester raced to Dean's side, sliding to his knees beside the felled hunter. He didn't immediately spot movement in his brother's chest, heartrate and tension spiking in response. Sam reached out, resting a finger beneath Dean's nose, his other hand searching for an undamaged spot to rest against the man's chest. God, his skin was as charred and blackened as Azazel's. Sam had to bite his cheek and look away from the edges of the blast, where his brother's shirt had flash-burned right into his skin.

 _There's no way anyone could survive that._

Sam shook his head, trying to fight back the death toll ringing in his head for his brother. Dean could. Dean could survive all sorts of things.

"Come on," he whispered, fighting back the flood of water that blurred his vision and threatened to spill past his eyelashes. "We have- We have an apocalypse to fight, Dean. You can't leave that all on me."

His brother didn't stir, and Sam's fear went from hyperventilating in his lungs to sinking heavy in his stomach, cementing with realization. Dean's chest wasn't moving beneath his hand, and he'd detected no current of air on his finger. The death toll persisted and the hunter let out a frustrated cry. He hobbled on his knees to his brother's legs and grabbed his ankles. Sam pulled the older man away from the wall, mindful of his head hitting the floor too hard. He slid a cautious hand beneath his head, weary of skull or neck trauma. Nothing shifted beneath his touch, at least, and he thanked God for that thick skull if nothing else.

Dean's chest still wasn't moving and Sam started CPR. His brother's skin was still warm. Sam tried to silence the science-wise section of his brain that insisted it took time for a dead body to lose its heat. Dean wasn't dead.

 _Not yet_.

Sam ground his teeth, muttering at his internal dialogue to shut the hell up. Dean's skill was pale and sallow. If- _When_ he got his brother breathing again, blood loss would be his next concern. The beating had earned the hunter more bruises than broken skin, but some of the cuts were still sluggishly leaking, and Sam didn't even know how to triage the blast to his chest. At least any external damage he had taken from it seemed superficial. Mostly burns, which would have cauterized any potential bleeding. It spoke little to the internal injuries that would come with a ground-zero discharge capable of throwing a grown man and a demon across a room.

Sam tried to put it out of his mind. Fifteen compressions. The young hunter shut his eyes tightly against the way his brother's ribcage moved beneath each forceful push of his palm. Multiple broken ribs. From the beating or the blast was anyone's guess. Dean's sternum was intact, however, and that bore the brunt of the compressions and kept his heart moving blood through his body.

Thirteen. Fourteen.

"Come on, man. Don't make me kiss you."

His brother didn't answer and Sam didn't wait for him to, instead tilting Dean's head back and sealing their mouths together. The older man's chest rose with the breath of air, and Sam delivered another. He immediately went back to chest compressions.

"I can't do this alone, Dean. Please!"

It took two more rounds of compressions and rescue breaths, tears falling freely to splash atop his interlocked hands, before Dean's chest rose of its own accord in a desperate grab for air. Sam practically collapsed atop the man, grabbing at the back of his head to keep him from falling to the hard floor again. Dean hacked and grabbed weakly at his chest with his one sort-of-good arm. He was too out of it to complain about his brother cradling him and pushing their foreheads together as they both just breathed.

"S'mmy?"

"Here, Dean," the kid whispered, shuttering his eyes and forcing his face and lungs back under composure.

"You huggin' me?" Dean's good eye was half-lidded, fingers twitching lightly, neurotically, against his chest in a way that suggested he wanted to rub it. Sam wondered if it was a leftover motion from before his torso decided to become a bomb, or if the burns itched.

"Kissed you, too," he muttered with a laugh, finally pulling away from his brother and lowering him back to the floor gently.

"Gross."

"Yeah." Sam scooted back an inch, trying to give Dean some space as the hunter took slow, measured breaths. They were shallow and looked painful, but were steady in their way. The two sat in silent reprieve, Sam listening to his brother breathe with just barely concealed paranoia and an impending adrenaline crash. Dean focused on inhaling, exhaling, not dying, and not thinking about the blinding explosion or the hollow ache in his chest.

"You figured…how to 'scape yet?" Dean's sentences were fractured, punctuated with slow breaths and still slurred words. The bomb had done his concussion no favors, but while his vision and equilibrium were shot, his thoughts were at least semi-lucid for the time being. Coming back from the dead would do that to you, apparently.

"Nah. Thought I'd save your lazy butt, first." Now that Dean was at least not dead, Sam turned his eyes to the cabin door. Azazel hadn't come back in, but the hunter could see movement beneath the line of the door.

"Bitch."

"Jerk." He turned back to Dean. The older Winchester was breathing steady, hand finally settled atop his chest, eyes closed. "Dean, what was that?"

"S'plosion."

Sam couldn't help the laugh that bubbled past his lips, even if was half formed by hysteria. "Yeah, I figured that much out for myself, thanks."

"Sorry."

He didn't bother asking what he was sorry for. He suspected it was that he'd sent his kid brother tomahawking across the room with that little chest bomb of his. Not that Dean had likely been conscious for that. Or able to see past the bright light.

The younger hunter's brain took a misstep at that thought, then reversed to examine it. That white-blue light had been familiar, now that he reconsidered it. It was eerily similar to the weird, high-pitched explosion that had chased away the Baku nightmare and ended the dream world a week ago.

Hadn't Azazel said something about an angel at Bobby's?

Slowly, Sam's eyes moved down to his stare at his brother's rising and falling chest. The niggling in his brain was turning into a full-fledged idea, which brought with it both fascination and trepidation. He hadn't gotten very far in his research on angels (they had had _a lot_ going on lately), but what he had read mentioned something about vessels needed for angelic possession. Dean corroborated the notion on the way to Max's, though in far less words, with Sam sort of filling in the blanks his brother hadn't wanted to say out loud. They were meant to be weapons of Heaven and Hell; rare humans capable of housing archangels. Vessels.

Could Castiel have been with them the entire time?

"Dean…" His brother slit open one green eye to stare up at him. "Was that Cas?"

A look of pain crossed the hunter's face and his fingers curled around the ruined edges of his shirt. It was clear from his shuddering breaths that he was fighting back panic and probably tears. Of course, given that he'd recently been tortured, had a demon's hand buried in his chest, and been technically deceased for at least forty five, fifty seconds, he was entitled to some manly crying. Even an emotionally challenged Dean Winchester couldn't argue with that, though Sam would never be so cruel (or suicidal) as to mention it aloud.

"I don't know." His voice was thick with something Sam could only compare to mourning, though he knew it wasn't quite the right fit. He didn't know what the story was with the angel, only that he had sent Dean back. But he recognized the emotion in his brother's words enough to know they must have been close.

It was weird to think of his big brother, staunch hunter and defender of humanity, caring for something so severely inhuman.

Dean was still valiantly trying not to think about it, and Sam's question was not helping. While he really didn't know what the hell that blast had been, he was seriously beginning to think it was Cas. The angel must have made the trip back with him, after all. What the hell his best friend was doing sitting in his chest, ignoring him for most of six months, was a whole other mystery for another time. If they ever got the time. Because what Dean didn't want to admit out loud – what he suspected was behind the harsh ache in his chest and the tightness of his throat and his burning eyes – was that if it had been Cas, setup with a nice Dean Winchester Sternum Condo, the angel was sure as hell gone now.

He couldn't muster the strength (or the courage) to look at the floor or the walls. But he'd seen that white explosion plenty of times before, most often followed by wing prints seared into whatever surface was nearby.

"Sammy." His voice was croaky and broke mid word. He cleared his throat and coughed, wincing as his broken ribs were jostled and his prickly, stinging flesh disturbed. "Are there…Are there, uh…"

 _Oh, man up, Winchester!_

"Are there wing prints?"

Above him, Sammy frowned at the question. "Wing prints?"

Dean tried not to let the fact that Sam had no idea what he was talking about spark any significant amount of hope in him. "On the fl-floor. Or wall."

Sam's puppy-brown eyes tracked away from Dean's body and up the wall they were camped out next to, searching for something he clearly wasn't seeing. There was nothing there but old graffiti, hints of mold, and the evidence of Azazel's torture. Sam looked away.

The floor was equally bare of whatever Dean was fearful of seeing. The young hunter scanned the rest of the room, but his eyes stopped on a spread of crimson not far from them. Sam's brilliant brain completely faltered, ending all attempts to parse what wing prints would be doing on the floor. Instead, he sat by his brother's side, mind blank, staring at the spilled demon blood two and a half feet away.

The jar was in shatters among the thick liquid; it must have been knocked off the dresser in the explosion. Iron filled his nostrils suddenly, and then it was all he could smell. The metallic cloy of the blood was everywhere. Breathing became hard. Air hitched in his lungs as he tried to take in more of the precious oxygen, but none seemed available. He couldn't tear his gaze away from that puddle of red as it grew ever closer. Expanding. Creeping.

Sam didn't know what was happening to him. He couldn't look away. The vibrating hum beneath the surface was burning. His fingers twitched on his thighs. His mouth salivated and his heart beat like a freight train.

He _wanted_ that blood.

"Sam?"

The young hunter startled, snapping his head back at his brother's low, panicked keen. He looked on the verge of an anxiety attack of his own for very, very different reasons.

"They're there, aren't they?" he whispered hoarsely. He pulled his gaze away from Sam, staring up at the ceiling as he tried and failed to keep a blank face. "God, he's dead. _Again_."

What?

Sam realized he had never answered his brother. However angels died, they must leave behind some sort of wing print. The kind of charcoal impression left by a massive explosion, he thought, as images of nuclear shadows came to mind. Oh, God.

"N-no," he stuttered, realizing his silence had done no favors to his brother, who was now sure that bomb had been his friend…exploding? Sam could ask questions about angelic death later. "No wing prints, Dean."

He staunchly kept his eyes on his older brother and didn't dare look back at that puddle.

Dean stared up at him, disbelieving and suspicious of his brother lying for only a moment before his face cleared and he sagged against the floor. Cas wasn't dead. The unhelpful voice that was his inner self quickly supplied the fact they weren't entirely sure Cas was ever alive or there to begin with. He told that voice to shut it, though, because no wing prints meant the angel wasn't dead, and that was a good enough place to start for him. Whether Cas was capable of being dead or dying in the first place was an existential question beyond Dean's emotional and mental capacity to handle for the time being.

The door to the cabin swung inward with a bang, and Sam instinctively moved himself between the danger and his brother, as best as he could while staying on the floor. Azazel strolled in, a new flannel covering his crispy arm. The shirt made him look almost human again, but the arm beneath the fabric remained ugly. Yellow Eyes paid it no mind, though, as he marched towards the two. Sam curled his fingers against his Dean's shoulder and chest, jaw set and chin up. He would not let the demon touch his brother again.

"Time for the main event, boys!" he announced. He didn't bother using his powers, moving straight up to Sam and grabbing him by the back of his shirt. The large human fought with everything he was worth – punches and kicks flying. Sam's fists took more damage than Azazel's meatsuit and the demon dragged the hunter back to the pillar in the center of the room.

He was straightened against it and a single push to his abdomen assured he stayed there. Azazel, confident his power would keep the boy pressed to the wood once more, strolled back over to Dean.

"Don't touch him! He's had enough!" Sam kicked out against the power that only seemed to be holding his torso in place this time. Azazel stopped by Dean's side, staring down at the hunter who glared right back at him. He didn't bother moving or trying to sit up – that strength was honestly beyond him now. Instead, he focused his energy into steady, even breathing and curled his hand protectively against his wrecked chest.

If Cas was in there, the demon was _not_ touching him again.

But Azazel only bent down and hauled the hunter up, directing his words and attention more to Sam than the guy he was currently manhandling. "Oh, he's fine. Aren't ya, sport?"

The demon tapped him on the shoulder, half to push him against the wall – not that it took much to topple the hunter backwards against the supportive surface – and half in a sick mockery of comradery.

"Whoa!" Dean yelped when his one good eye focused on the hand currently giving his left shoulder a love tap. The hunter struggled away from the blackened skin and clinging flesh. "Uh-uh. No, no way. Keep those Kentucky Fried Fingers the hell away from me!"

Azazel's regarded Dean with an unimpressed look, the pat turning into a painfully tight grip just above his collarbone. The hunter still made a disgusted face at the crispy arm that settled him against the wall with the kind of firm push that said, _'stay.'_ The demon stepped back, releasing him almost cautiously, eyebrows raised in a way that clearly expected the hunter to collapse without the support. Dean did slide down the wall a bit, but managed to wedge himself into a position where the surface bore enough of his weight to keep him upright.

"Well…mostly fine." Azazel grinned at him.

Dean doubled the power of his glare.

"I admit," Yellow Eyes turned away from him and bent over, scooping up John's jacket from the floor and giving it a quick dust off, "I wasn't expecting that little lightshow."

The keys to the Impala slipped free from the split pocket and rang out as they hit floor. The demon scooped them up as well and tucked them into the pocket of his jeans. Dean growled from his position on the wall, but the Azazel ignored him. His attention returned to John Winchester's jacket.

The article of clothing was beyond repair, ripped in multiple places and down both sleeves in the demon's efforts to remove it from the hunter earlier that night. It was really more hanging rags than clothing now. Azazel glanced at the hunter, then his ruined chest, then the jacket, and seemed to make up his mind with a nod and a snap of his fingers.

Sam watched with wide eyes as the clothing was torn and bloodied one second, then whole the next. Azazel snapped a second time and the leather was suddenly snuggly fit around his brother's torso, good as new.

"I might have blown the fireworks a bit early. Didn't mean to bang you up quite that much, bucko." The demon stepped back into Dean's personal space and the hunter drew back as much as was possible with the wall already barely keeping him standing. Azazel pulled the jacket closed a bit more, particularly around his damaged chest.

"There. You can hardly even tell." He patted Dean's shoulder with a grin and stepped away. The demon turned towards Sam. He raised a finger to his lips with a conspiratorial wink. "It'll be our little secret, right, Sammy?"

"You son of a bitch!" Sam surged against the power holding him back, kicking out his legs because he could, though little good it did him. The young hunter opened his mouth to spit out something really unpleasant, but the rumble of a truck coming up a dirt drive killed the words still on his tongue. The kid turned his head, view of the front of the cabin blocked once more by the pillar, but the wall Dean was leaning against lit up as headlights pierced through the broken windows and moved along the surface.

 _Dad._

Sam locked eyes with his brother, meeting Dean's mixed gaze with his own.

"Show time!" Azazel clapped his hands together as the engine cut off outside, the light vanishing as a car door opened. There was tense silence in the room, the demon quiet in anticipation, and the boys in trepidation. Heavy footsteps preceded the cabin door banging open. Sam whipped his head around, again trying to see the rest of the room behind him to no avail.

John Winchester stood in the doorway, hand wrapped around the grip of an antique gun in one hand. Trained eyes assessed the single room before he strode into the space.

Sam met his gaze the moment he appeared beside the pillar, head turned to take in his son. "Dad."

John looked well-rested, Sam was relieved to see. He'd left before they'd been able to confirm the Baku dead, and some part of the youngest Winchester had chased after him not only to catch up, to maybe yell at him for being a stubborn ass, to give him a piece of his mind and aid in the hunt, but also to make sure he really was safe. Blood always did run thicker than water for Winchesters; a fact he'd tried so hard to escape.

His father gave a solemn nod in response. The young man took heart in that steadfast gaze. It had gotten him and Dean through many ugly spots, and he trusted it to get them through this one, too.

John turned back to the other two occupants of the cabin. The yellow eyed bastard stood beside his eldest, who was slouched against the wall looking for all the world like it was the only thing holding him up. The old hunter grit his teeth at the sight of his boy.

The way Dean favored his right leg spoke volumes as to the condition of his left. His jeans were torn to shit, stained dark with what John could only assume was his kid's blood. His own boiled in his veins at the rest of the boy. His old leather jacket was oddly clean; it still showed wear and tear from the years, but was unnaturally spotless on a bloody and torn body.

"Dad," Dean croaked, the twitch of a smile a reassuring sign for the struggling father buried within the steadfast hunter. His son's face was more swollen than not, though his one good eye was focused on his dad, pupil dilated but clear.

"Son," he whispered back, clearing his throat when the declaration was far softer than he'd intended.

"Is that my gun, John?"

The hunter's focus shifted to the demon, expression hardening to stone. John glanced down at the 1836 Colt Paterson he held in his hand, lifting his arm to chest-height to examine the antique weapon. With a deep, fortifying breath, he unwrapped his hand from the grip and held the gun out in his open palm, presenting it to the yellow eyed bastard.

Azazel strolled forward. Beside them, Sam tensed, every warning imaginable on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't bring himself to speak any of them. It was that gun or his brother's life, and the choice was not a hard one for him. The demon plucked the weapon from John's hand and the hunter lowered his outstretched arm with the stiffness of someone barely holding back a punch.

Yellow Eyes curled his charred fingers around the grip of the antique gun, running his other hand down the barrel in admiration. He reached his thumb up to the hammer, lowering it back slowly and listening to the settling of the chamber and the click of a bullet lining into place. Azazel gave a hearty sigh. "What a pain in the ass this thing has been."

He turned his shoulder into the room, raised the gun, and leveled it straight at Dean.

"No!" Sam screamed as the report of the weapon cracked through the cabin like thunder. Dean jerked back in shock as the bullet caught him in his right shoulder, just beneath the collar bone. Blood splattered the wall behind him as the bullet pierced straight through, embedding into the wood. He slid down another inch, good leg scrabbling for purchase. The hunter's eyes were wide with surprise, his chest heaving despite the bursts of pain each breath caused, and his workable arm reaching shakily up for the new injury.

But he kept to his feet, and he didn't die.

Brown eyes spun back to the weapon, still smoking in the demons outstretched arm. It wasn't the Colt. Sam could see the differences now that he was looking for them. His dad had brought a fake – he must have picked up an antique Texas Paterson on his way to the cabin.

Azazel lowered the useless gun to his side, sending John a baleful glower over his shoulder. "You're lucky that wasn't the real deal, John. Now where's my gun?"

The hunter grit his teeth, fisted hands shaking at his side as he struggled to keep his composure. Luckily, the anger coursing through him was as good a cover as any for the tremors of fear and adrenaline running parallel within him. His eldest son slid further down the wall, energy and consciousness clearly flagging.

"You son of a bitch-"

"I'll shoot him again."

"It's nearby." He kept his tone even and impressively calm. If there was one thing John Winchester was good at, it was refusing to fall prey to emotions. "Let my boys go and I'll take you to it myself."

Azazel lifted the false Colt, this time aiming for Dean's head. The kid, mess as he was, met the barrel straight on, chest heaving, hand clasped to his bleeding shoulder, body barely holding itself up. Yellow Eyes just smirked down the sight of the weapon.

" _You_ can go get it, Johnny-Boy, or Sam here becomes an only child."

The youngest Winchester snarled, kicking out forcefully against the weight still holding him back. John clenched and unclenched his fists in indecision, eyes flickering between the demon and his ailing son.

"It'll take two people," he finally said through gritted teeth. "I'm not stupid enough to come in here without insurance. So we can go get it together, or-"

Sam tumbled off the pillar as his invisible restraints abruptly vanished. He righted himself quickly, but moved no further. Uncertainty warred across his face as he glanced between the members of his family, both who needed him.

"You have twenty minutes." Azazel finally withdrew the gun, twirling it around his finger. "Dean and I will be making the most of every one of them, so I suggest you hurry."

Dean growled by the wall, but the look he sent his family clearly said to get out while they could. He'd be fine. Sam started towards him on that stare alone. He wasn't leaving his brother with that demon for another second. Dean wouldn't survive it – he was barely surviving it now!

"Sam!"

His father's sharp command made the boy flinch, but stopped him mid step. He turned to confront the older man, anger and defiance immediately flashing to the surface. Both died at the stern look on John's face. Sam knew that look. Sure, it looked just like the expression their dad always wore when reprimanding his boys. But the young hunter had spent years reading the subtleties of his father and brother, particularly in strenuous, critical situations. He knew that look.

So he stalked towards his dad with the right amount of moody anger and hesitant glances over his shoulder at Dean. As soon as he was within arm's reach, John wrapped a firm hand to the back of his neck. It was possessive as it was comforting, as sure a paradox as the concerned but demanding look he gave his youngest.

"It'll be alright, son." John pulled Sam into a one armed hug. His eyes darkened as he locked gazes with the demon over his boy's shoulder.

The possessive gesture was an unmistakable challenge for Yellow Eyes. It was also enough to make him leer at the hunter and completely miss the way Sam reached around his father's waist, fingers finding purchase along the hilt of the Colt tucked in the waistline of John's jeans. He withdrew the weapon from his father's back, swinging his shoulder around. In one fluid motion, he brought his arm up, cocked and leveled the gun on the yellow eyed demon, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet tore from the barrel, its aim true. It ripped through the demon's chest, only milliseconds after Azazel disappeared. A startled breath left the hunter's lungs like a punch. The bullet shot through the cabin unhindered and slammed into the wall inches from his brother's head.

Dean jerked to the side, instinct and surprise taking over his failing body. He wasn't able to recover from the sudden, violent movement, and he fell more than slid the rest of the way to the floor.

John was already moving. From his coat pocket he pulled out a thick leather sack, fingers hastily working the strings loose as he reached Dean's side. Dropping to one knee beside the unconscious boy, the hunter spun in a half circle around them. The old joint twinged from too many rough years spent on the job, but he ignored the soreness. Within the frame of thirty seconds, he had a thick salt line poured from wall to wall in a half ring around himself and his boy.

Sam had moved with his father and now stood a scant foot away with his back to his family. He scanned the room with focus and anxious fury. The hammer of the Colt was drawn back once more, weapon raised and ready to fire as soon as he saw the yellow eyed bastard.

"Sam!"

The young Winchester glanced behind him at his father's bark, spotting the completely salt line. He took a hasty foot back, careful to step over the grains without disturbing the line. The boy immediately went back to scouring the room as John set the leather pouch aside and scooted up to his oldest. Dean didn't make a sound as their dad bunched up his own jacket and pressed it to the sluggishly bleeding shoulder wound. Sam could tell from his brother's breathing that he had finally lost the fight against unconsciousness.

"That line won't last forever."

Sam spun at the whisper, slimy and coming from their right. The demon was already gone, but the granules of salt shifted in the breeze of his disappearance. John managed to firm up the line and hold the makeshift bandage to his son.

"Neither will your brother."

This time Sam fired before he had line of sight on the demon. His aim was still good, drilled in by years of training to act faster than his vision allowed. But the demon blinked out once more and the bullet bit into the front wall of the cabin.

"Sam." Once more, his father's voice forced him to pull his gaze from the room and back to his family. The tone was far too familiar and set Sam's teeth on edge. The demon would be back at any moment, and this was no time for a damn lecture. John stared at him, then the gun with something fierce and warning in his gaze. Terrible realization filled the boy, turning his lungs and gut to cement. He turned his back to the room to shield the weapon from sight as he slid open the chamber.

Only two bullets left.

Damn it. The way his dad was looking at him meant they didn't have spare ammo, either. Sam had already wasted two in his anger and desperation, the bullet count the last thing on his mind in the face of his family's annihilation. He twisted the cylinder shut. The demon could vanish faster than his eye could even register. Sam knew his worth as a sharp shooter, and it wasn't that good.

"I can save Dean, you know."

Sam stiffened at the voice coming just over his shoulder. John stilled his ministrations on his oldest boy, turning sharp eyes to the Yellow Eyed Demon standing just outside the line of salt. Pale irises regarded the man whose son's life hung in the balance.

"Maybe in exchange for that gun." That sickening gaze slid from John to Sam like slime. "And a little something more."

John lashed his hand out faster than Sam could turn around with the Colt. Water arced through the air, splashing across the demon's chest. The liquid soaked into the flannel and both hunters waited for the sizzle and steam of the unholy. Azazel glanced up from his chest, a single brow raised in amusement.

"You think something like that works on something like me?"

Sam made to turn, raising the gun and the demon disappeared once more.

"Son, give me the Colt." The order was non-negotiable and John held his hand out expectantly. His youngest looked down at the weapon, eyes cloudy with thought and emotion that they didn't have time for now. John waved his open palm expectantly. "This is me. I won't miss."

Sam still stared at the gun. He knew his father's worth as a sharp shooter too, and it was better than his own. The boy's fingers tightened around the handle, considering his options. John was still holding his hand out, other arm cradling Dean. Dean needed a hospital, and he needed it _yesterday_. Sam's eyes roved over his brother, blood dripping from so many wounds.

The youngest Winchester closed his eyes briefly, making peace with the same decision he'd once before faced. Sam turned around, raising the Colt to his head. A sound he had never heard his father make before escaped the man's throat. He was watching his boy raise a gun that could kill anything – that would destroy his soul, if John Winchester believed in such a thing – to his own skull. Sam couldn't spare him any of his focus, eyes locked on the center of the room as he waited.

Azazel did not make him wait long. The demon reappeared right in his sightline, several feet away with a sour look. "Using the same bluff twice, Sam? I thought we were past this."

Sam flexed his fingers around the cold grip of the gun, but otherwise didn't move. He ignored the way his lungs begged for air like he wasn't breathing and his heart beat away at his rib cage like it was the lead drummer at a Metallica concert. "It's not a bluff."

"Sammy…" John's voice was quiet, probably the softest Sam had ever heard it. He couldn't look his dad's way, couldn't see the disappointment or concern. This _wasn't_ a bluff, but it would turn into one if he couldn't keep his resolve rock steady.

Azazel took a step forward, head tilting to the side in an inhuman, calculative way that set Sam's nerves on edge. He struggled not to counter the move with a step back.

"What's it gonna get you, tiger?" Yellow Eyes flicked his gaze to the two men on the ground behind him. "I'm going to tear through them as soon as you're dead."

"No. You won't. You're going to let us walk out of here. Then my dad and I are going to drive my brother to the nearest hospital, and you're not going to follow us."

The demon snorted. "And they're not the droids I'm looking for, I take it."

There was a silly, irrational part of Sam, likely born of hysteria and stress, that wished Dean was awake because he was so much better at mindless banter and he would have _enjoyed_ that line. But Dean wasn't awake, this wasn't a clever line in a movie, and Sam couldn't afford to falter.

"I'm not just your favorite, am I?" Because some of this _was_ a bluff, and he would never pull it off if he didn't sound like he believed it. "I'm it. I'm the one. You already know none of those other kids have what it takes. They won't get the job done."

The change in the demon's demeanor was subtle, but his face twitched as a war between distaste and severe satisfaction started its way to the surface of his skin.

"Are you going to risk losing that? Waste twenty-three years of waiting – _grooming_ – just to kill two hunters?"

Yellow eyes swirled back to their natural steel blue, and slid slowly over to the two men behind Sam. The unpleasant expression on his face broke as he gave a casual little shrug. "They are _really_ annoying hunters."

Sam cocked the hammer of the colt with his thumb, and Azazel finally relented with an eye roll. His body language turned on a dime, tension fading in an instant. He let out a boisterous laugh and clapped his hands together. There was a swagger to him that hadn't seemed possible a tense ten seconds ago.

"You. You!" He waggled his finger at the hunter. "Still shooting straight down the center, slugger!"

Sam clenched his teeth as the demon all but danced before them.

"Oh, breaking you is going to be a pain in the ass, I can tell." Azazel's eyes slipped closed, his head tilting back with a deep and prideful breath. A smile played at his lips that made Sam's stomach clench. When he opened his eyes once more, there was a predatory gleam to their blue depths that hadn't been there before. "But it's gonna be a thing of beauty when I do."

The demon enjoyed himself a moment longer before simmering down. He regarded Sammy calmly. The young hunter still held the gun tightly to his head, almost nervously now. Azazel's smile smoothed out and he glanced past the staunch boy to the brother on the floor, shielded protectively – uselessly – by his father. The kid was getting a bit low on blood, the demon noted, and that chunk of grace in his chest didn't seem to be doing him any favors in the healing department.

Perfect.

Azazel locked eyes with his favorite kiddo once more and dug into the pocket of his jeans. Sam's hand flexed around the gun, but there was no need. The demon pulled out Dean's car keys and tossed the bundle at the hunter, who caught them one handed.

"Better drive fast, Sammy."

Then he was gone.

-o-o-o-

Sam dropped his arm and the Colt with it as soon as the demon disappeared. He had no guarantee that Azazel was truly gone; the demon could just be letting them think they were free. Either way, it didn't really matter. If they didn't get Dean medical help immediately, he was going to die. So they had to risk it; they had to try.

The young hunter turned his back on the room, tucking the Colt into his jeans and crouching beside his brother and father. This time, he couldn't afford to heed the shaking in his hands or the way his head spun with a rush of vertigo and nausea following his most recent, purposeful brush with death. Holding that damn gun to his head was worse than any close call he'd had on a hunt. It was so much worse because he had to accept, each time, that he was ready and willing to die, to pull that trigger and cease existing.

It terrified him just how easy it was, both times. It wasn't just Azazel hoping to never see that move again.

John was staring at him with an expression Sam didn't have the energy to decipher. He settled on his knees beside his brother, blurry vision feeding him the same conclusion Yellow Eyes had taunted him with. Dean was seriously running out of time.

"You should have given me the gun." That look his father was giving him didn't waiver. Sam filed it away as disappointment. It was the most likely conclusion anyway and the easiest for the beleaguered son to push from his mind. "We could have ended this!"

Sam was too tired to fight, he decided, curling his fingers into loose fists to hide the tremors from his father and from himself. "Dean doesn't have time for your revenge, Dad."

He studied his brother's injured body, trying to decide the best way to lift the broken hunter without injuring him further. There was no way of telling if Dean had suffered internal damage from that bomb blast, and he was loathe to move those broken ribs. They needed to get him to a hospital somehow, though.

 _Well, if CPR didn't puncture a lung, what more can moving him do?_

Sam scooped his arms under his brother's shoulders, intending to push Dean into an upright position enough to gather his legs beneath him and lift the man into a bridal carry. If awake, his brother would protest fiercely. Sam could already hear the flustered, furious outcry that Dean wasn't anybody's bride, fuck you very much. But he wasn't awake, and Sam couldn't risk a fireman's carry with his brother's ribcage as it was.

John grabbed him harshly by the arm before he could transition Dean upright. The youngest Winchester managed not to jerk away, though the first degree burns on the inside of his arm protested angrily under the harsh treatment.

"Those bullets were made special for that gun, Sam. Once they're gone, it's _useless_! You have to make every one of them count."

Sam just stared at his father, eyes going dead to the reproach in his voice and the anger in every line of his body. "That's what you're worried about right now? Your son is _dying_ and you want to lecture me about wasting ammo?"

"Damn it, boy, killing that thing comes first – before you, me, your brother. Before everything!"

A groan interrupted the argument. Dean was starting to come back around, good eye cracking open. The green iris was glazed with pain and confusion, and Sam doubted Dean knew where he was. But he knew that angry voice, even if his clouded brain couldn't process the words.

"Dad…" His voice was wrecked, and Sam slid his eyes closed in regret. Getting him to the car would have been far easier on Dean if he'd stayed unconscious for it.

Sam pulled away from his father's grip. He reached behind him for the Colt and pulled it free from his waist. The youngest Winchester all but shoved the gun at John's chest, the force of it causing his father to stumble back on his heels. John released his arm in order to catch the weapon before it tumbled into his lap.

"No, sir. Not everything." He said it straight to his father's face, daring him to choose the demon over his oldest son. There was still hesitation there, side by side with pain and what Sam knew was fear even if John Winchester would never own up to it. The young hunter gave him a pointed look, then scooped his hands beneath Dean's armpits and, with a silent apology, hauled his brother up.

Dean let out a breathless groan and what was probably meant to be an _"oh hell."_ He spat a mouthful of blood to the side, words too garbled and wet to understand. He may not be very aware of what was going on outside his world of pain and spinning, but he knew his brother's presence by his side. That was the same as safe in his book, so he allowed Sam to start shuffling them forward and helped the best he could with uncooperative feet.

With his brother's least injured arm slung over his shoulder, Sam helped him hobble on one leg to the door of their prison. Dean was making a valiant effort, biting down on the pain that every step surely caused. Sam opted to honor his effort and not carry him until he faltered. The upright struggle was probably better for his busted ribs anyhow, even if it was hell on his broken limbs.

The youngest Winchester didn't wait to see if his father followed. He moved his brother through the front door, still open from John's entrance. Relief flooded him on an irrational level at the sight of the dirt drive, sans stairs, and the Impala parked only a half dozen feet away. Sam had already been mentally preparing himself for up to a half-flight of stairs with his one-legged, flagging brother. What cabin didn't come with a rickety wooden staircase on its front porch? Just seeing the car – their home – so close, with no further obstacles between them, felt like a win.

It was the little things in life, really.

He heard John's heavy boots walking the inside of the cabin – what sounded like a perimeter sweep – as he hauled Dean towards the car. Sam was just trying to figure out how he was going to get the door open and his brother inside when their dad appeared at his elbow. John reached around his sons to pull open the back door of the Impala, and Sam slipped Dean inside as gingerly as possible.

His dad moved around to help pull Dean through the backseat so he could lay along the length of it. The boy mumbled something almost unintelligible that sounded a hell of a lot like ' _Bastard did drive my car_.'Sam couldn't believe it, staring at his brother with the ridiculous urge to laugh right there. Their dad, almost gently, told Dean to shelve it and stop talking. He closed the driver's side passenger door and Dean settled his head against the interior of it as soon as it clicked shut.

John moved for the driver's seat automatically, but Sam was already pulling open the door and sliding in behind the steering wheel. The older hunter faltered for only a moment of genuine uncertainty before going around the back of the vehicle to the passenger side. The Impala wasn't his car anymore, and his sons weren't children. Sam started the old vehicle up with a deep, welcoming rumble.

Glancing at his truck parked to their side, John hesitated climbing into muscle car, instead considering following the boys to the hospital instead. One look at his barely conscious son in the back seat banished the notion from his mind. He climbed into the Impala and Sam reversed down the dirt road as fast as he could without jostling their cargo too much.

-o-o-o-

Dean easily lost time surrounded by the comforting, familiar rumble of his Baby beneath his hurting body. The first stretch of road had been torture, both in the slow progress they made and the tossing of the low-riding muscle car on a forest road. But they'd hit a paved path soon enough, the ride smoothing out and speeding up, and Dean found himself mentally unfurling as his Baby bore them towards blessed morphine.

The thought of a hospital was one of relief, rare as it was in their line of work, and he found the idea disconcerting. At first, Dean blamed the uncomfortable weight in his chest on that. No hunter ever volunteered to go to the hospital. If you needed medical attention that badly, your odds of making it to the next hunt were slim. But the weight became a niggle in the back of his brain that wouldn't leave him be, so Dean next chalked it up to the numerous injuries, the explosion of light from his sternum that he was still refusing to think about, and multiple concussions. Yet, still it persisted. Dean frowned in the backseat as the nagging started to poke holes in the peaceful lull cocooning his brain. He just wanted to fall asleep in the back of his Baby with his family safe and sound with him. Was that so much to ask, damn it?

His train of thought stumbled and the worry became full-fledged panic. This whole thing was awfully familiar, wasn't it? And not in a good way. His dad in the passenger seat, speaking terse, quiet words. Sammy sitting rigid in the front, steering them to safety as fast as his Baby would go. The gentle give of the backseat beneath his bleeding, broken body. Dean knew, though it took his addled brain too long to peace it together, that they'd been here before.

The semi slammed into the Impala, t-boning it straight off the country road, before Dean could form the words to warn his family.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **END of SEASON 1**

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns:**_ _I swear that's the last cliffhanger for a while. You guys have been champs through all of them; the amount of all-caps screaming in my general direction has been spectacular._

 _ **CPR**_ _\- Current CPR guidelines list the compression to breath ration at 30:2 for a single resuscitator, but prior to mid-2005 the standard was 15:2. My guess is that in May of 2006, Sam would still be performing CPR the old way, especially as that's how John would have taught him._

 _ **Up Next: Season 2**_ _– This story is going to go on a *small* break, just a month and a half, while I stockpile chapters for next season. However, never fear, during that month break I will be posting two interlude stories featuring the movements of Heaven and Hell, so it won't be radio silence. Our favorite angel features prominently in the first, so all you Cas fans should finally be happy XP  
_

 _ **Reviews**_ _: Please, please, please review! Comments spur the muse forward, excitement for the story even more so. The more excited the muse, the more chapters I get written, the more weekly updates you get during Season 2_ _ **.**_ _All caps is absolutely accepted. Unintelligible yelling, totally welcome. Death threats for what comes next, the more the merrier._

 _Thank you all again for sticking with me this far!_


	32. Season 1: Interlude I

_**A/Ns:** Welcome to the first of two interludes during this month and a half break. To address the couple of questions about posting a new story for Season 2 or continuing posting here. We will **continue posting here**. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!_

 _ **Chapter Warnings:** Cas and Heaven are up first! Disobedience, Crust-Side hospital hopping, bodiless demons, and a Baku. Off-screen tertiary character death (or is it?! ;)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 1: Interlude I

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Heaven came in many forms, far too many to count. God's paradise was an ever shifting land of light, color, and peace. To the angels that patrolled its halls, it presented shimmering towers, endless halls of white stone, and domed ceilings that reached for the heavens, painted in the ever shifting colors of the sky below. The stone with which it was built was smooth as glass and shone with iridescent colors of all the wings of the Heavenly Host. The high arches and open-air courtyards were perfect for resonating the voices so often raised in heavenly rejoice.

For the humans that resided in their individual paradises, Heaven was a mirror of the Earth they had spent their physical life on, enlightened by the divine. A paradise of their own making, etched from their happiest moments and most cherished memories.

Castiel often visited with the humans who resided in his Father's kingdom. Most did not take notice of him. Some mistook him for friends and family that would come and go in their reminiscing. His favorite soul to visit had not once noticed his presence, mistaken or otherwise, which was fine for the angel. He did not frequent Arthur Staten's afterlife for the man's company, but for the unique beauty with which he viewed his world.

Arthur was autistic. While his soul did not bare the same hardships his body had carried, the young man knew no other perception of the world than that which he had seen through a brain that processed visuals so differently than most of his kind.

Castiel had yet to find a word that accurately captured the human's exceptional perspective.

The visualization of Arthur's world was simultaneously muted and explosive. Colors were vibrant and overwhelming, but came in amorphous blobs that had more in common with watercolor masterpieces than the people, places, and things they were. The visuals were not important to Arthur, though. It wasn't how he saw the world. He visualized through sound and touch.

His mother was a gentle brush of the back of a hand or the playful nudge of an elbow to his side. She was the off-key humming of a song Arthur didn't know the name of, nor understood the need to label something that was already identifiable by the very sounds comprising it. The second chorus that was most defined as his mother was always off pitch in the worst of ways. Such a thing grated on the man's sharp hearing and perfect mathematical understanding of pitch and tone, but it was so familiar that it was one of the most comforting sounds in the world to him despite its blatant flaws.

Castiel liked Arthur's heaven. Today was one of his preferred memories from the man's life. As a child, Arthur's mother often took him to the park down the street from their house. He would count the cracks in the sidewalk as they went. The number never changed, and that always made him happy. The other kids would play on the colorful structures that squeaked with rust and clanged the way hollow metal does when barreled into by a forty pound ball of unleashed energy. Arthur sat with his mother and watched the way each shriek or giggle changed the hue and shape of the splashes of color that represented each child.

Castiel sat on the bench next to Arthur and his mother, watching the world around him shift from the touch of a breeze across Arthur's cheeks, the brush of his mother's hand to his forearm, and the barking of a dog impatiently waiting for her master to throw her favorite ball.

"Ah, there you are."

The angel turned to look over his shoulder at his approaching brother, who swaggered like a human even when he had no vessel. Balthazar was considered by many in the Host as odd, but Castiel found his individuality curios and, dare he say, endearing.

"Thought I'd find you here," his brother said as he slid onto the bench beside him, wings catching the bright sunlight of Arthur's memory.

Castiel did not respond, turning his attention back to the children still playing. Many of his garrison knew he came here to seek solace and revelation. Like they did not understand Balthazar, many did not understand Castiel either. Perhaps that was what endeared him to his brother, and his brother to him.

"What's going through that head of yours, Cassie?"

That was another thing that set Balthazar apart from the rest of the Host. The way he spoke was quite…human. The angel had taken a fancy long ago to the different lilts of human language, and often expressed his many grievances that Enochian allowed for little deviation of its own. So he spent centuries tweaking their native tongue until he had his own, distinctive version. It was considered, by many, reprehensible. Castiel just thought it sounded vaguely British.

Given that the two of them were among the few angels who actually sought out humanity's various paradises on their leisure and even enjoyed the remembered worlds, it was not too peculiar that Balthazar had adopted some of the species' more acceptable quirks. Nor was it actually a punishable offense. Just…unorthodox.

"I am puzzled," Castiel answered his brother eventually, honest as he always was.

"Color me surprised," Balthazar responded in a tone Castiel did not understand but was beginning to identify as meaning the complete opposite of whatever was spoken. Quirks. "You usually are whenever I find you here."

Balthazar shifted, tucking a leg up onto the bench and turning his chest towards his brother. One brown and white speckled wing flapped, scattering the freshly fallen leaves across the ground around them. Arthur turned towards the two angels, the world growing quieter as he did so, but his eyes remained unseeing of their colors. His mother started up her gentle humming, and soon his attention was called back. Balthazar settled the wing over the top of the bench.

"What's got your knickers in a twist this time?"

Castiel did not know what knickers were, but he knew they were more twisted than ever before.

"There is a human – a man – praying to me." The stoic angel turned his full attention to his more charismatic brother. Perhaps this was a good happenstance. Perhaps Balthazar would have some thoughts as to how to address his predicament.

"A man, eh?" Balthazar's facial swirls shifted form and color in both interest and mockery. Castiel resisted the urge to glare. It would be rude.

"Yes. He prays quite often, and to me specifically." Castiel thought back to each of those pleas. He frowned, brow pinched in vexation. "Sometimes he's quite angry with me. Others, he requests my assistance: my guidance. Sometimes he just…talks."

Beside him, Balthazar shrugged. "Humans are strange, lonely creatures. They alleviate that loneliness with speech."

"But why to me?"

"Who knows? Humans have fads, and the supernatural is in right now. Some poor SOB probably stumbled across your name and decided you were the one to save his wretched existence." The way Balthazar put extra flourish into his words made Castiel doubt very much that was the case. "Maybe it was a Thursday."

The far more reserved angel was sure that if had conventional eyeballs as humans did, he would be rolling them. But he did not, and his brother _was_ trying to help him in his own, unique way.

"He…" Castiel hesitated for a moment, unsure how to voice his supposition. Balthazar watched him expectantly, support coloring his face despite his often acerbic tongue. With only a slight shift to his celestial wavelengths – the equivalent of a flush – Castiel admitted, "It's foolish."

"Nonsense; nothing's foolish but fools, Cassie. And neither you nor I fit into that category." The angel paused briefly, then tilted his head in concession. "No matter what Zachariah says about me."

Castiel could not help the laughter that flitted across his face. Slightly more at ease, as he was sure was his brother's intention, he relented, "This human speaks to me as if he knows me, Balthazar."

His brother hummed in thought, turning his head away to stare at the shifting colors of the playground. "And you haven't taken any strolls crust-side lately? Mingled with the natives?"

Castiel tilted his head towards the other angel, expression chiding. "You know it is not permitted; the gates are shut."

"Well, only one thing to do then." Balthazar pushed up and off the bench. Castiel watched him in earnest. He was in honest need of an opinion beyond what he had formed by his own confused thoughts. Balthazar turned back to him with a flourish of wings and a grin Castiel immediately knew he would regret causing. "We'll just have to fix that miserable travel record of yours."

The angel blinked, staring uncomprehendingly up at his brother. "What?"

"Come on, Cassie! You've got a human begging you for your help. Let's go find out why!"

Castiel continued to stare. "Balthazar, it is _impermissible_. We don't have authorization for a mission on Earth."

His brother rolled his head in a manner Castiel suspected was much like a human rolling their eyes. Balthazar locked his gaze on the reluctant angel as he himself stood, bold and intrepid, with a challenge in his many eyes. "Come, brother. Were we not meant to be the shepherds of men?"

The angel hesitated. That was true… The Host had been tasked with the guardianship of mankind since its creation, to look after them and guide them. That was why man was able to pray to the Heavenly Host in the first place.

"But the gate is closed."

"Please," Balthazar scoffed, one hand on his hip, the other gesturing to himself. "You think I learned all this from old, dead wankers? The gate's not the only way out of this place."

His brother extended his hand, and Castiel shifted his gaze to it.

"Come on, Castiel. Your sheep is calling."

-o-o-o-

As their incorporeal feet touched down on God's green earth, Castiel took in a deep breath as he had not in almost a century. Beside him, Balthazar looked far too smug, causing a sheepish expression to filter across the angel's features. It had been far too long since he stood amidst his Father's many creations and admired them for their beauty as much as their flaws. He had not realized how much he missed it.

"Alright," his brother clapped his hands together, looking around at the small forest village they'd touched down in, somewhere in northern Germany. "Where's that human of yours live, hm?"

Castiel quieted his mind and grace to recall the man's last prayer. He had not spoken to Castiel in several days, but the angel could easily remember the last echoes of that voice. It had plead for assistance for another; his brother, named Sam. His appeals eventually turned to anger when 'Cas,' as the man often called him, had not miraculously appeared at the hospital the two humans resided in.

"Evanston Regional Hospital Emergency Room, in Evanston, Nebraska," he repeated the information the human had left him several times in increasingly distressed messages.

Balthazar raised an eyebrow. "A Yankee, huh? Alright then; US of A, here we come."

Castiel understood almost nothing of what his brother said, but considering Balthazar had been making unauthorized visits to the planet for some time now, he chose to follow his lead. The two angels took flight, soaring over forests, lakes, farmlands, and great expanses of ocean.

-o-o-o-

They landed in the hustle and bustle of an ER receiving area. Nurses darted to and fro, expressions harried, but every movement executed with terrifying efficiency. Doctors came in and out of halls, calling names from clipboards or escorting nurses with patients on stretchers through a set of double doors, disappearing beyond.

Castiel had not visited the earth since his garrison's last mission in the late eighteen hundreds. Back then, steam engines were considered the industrialized revolution of transportation and electricity a privileged commodity. Of course, he had seen the world change and develop through the memories of Heaven's charges. He was familiar with the advancements, though he had never taken the time to learn of them at a more hands-on level. Now, standing in the middle of the chaos that was the twenty-first century, he was… overwhelmed.

Balthazar looked like a kid in a candy shop. "Amazing, isn't it? All this, in a hundred and fifty years. And Zachariah still calls them mud-monkeys."

Castiel cast a curious glance at his companion's scoffing tone in regard to their commanding officer. It was no secret that Balthazar and Zachariah had a…difference of opinions. However, Castiel was fairly certain humanity wasn't one of those. "I did not know you held mankind in such esteem."

His brother laughed, holding out his arms at their environment. "It's the luxuries I admire, Castiel! Not the humans. I mean, look around. They really know how to live it up!"

He then paused, tapping a finger to his chin in a very human way. "Perhaps a hospital isn't the _best_ place to admire the finer things…. After we find your boy, I'll show you the high life, Cassie. Just you wait."

The conservative angel spared him a skeptical, if not very confused look.

"One word, brother: hot tubs."

"That is two words," Castiel countered as he returned his senses to the environment around them, deciding Balthazar was once more being…well, Balthazar. He concentrated on the many souls residing in this building. Several of them were fading, which explained the reaper also patrolling the floors. He did not, however, find the one he was looking for.

"You're no fun," Balthazar was griping, crossing his arms. "So, where's your man?"

"He is not my man," the angel answered automatically, but his face was pinched in thought. "Nor is he currently here."

Balthazar puckered his lips, entertainment at this adventure beginning to fade. Honestly, he'd assumed they'd find some pimpled up teenager locked in his room, gothed to the nines and praying to angels and the gods of punk rock. He'd have gotten a kick out of the horrified look on his brother's face, and then he'd show him what he was really missing.

"Humans move, Cassie. It's kind of their thing."

His brother spared him a scathing look. "I am aware of that, Balthazar. However, his brother was gravely injured; I did not think they would relocate so quickly."

"Perhaps the brother died." The angel picked at his hand. If he was human, he would surely be cleaning the underside of nails he did not have as an angel. Perhaps Balthazar was spending a bit _too_ much time with humans. "Or your man found someone else to give him the miracle he went looking for."

Castiel flinched at the remark. Balthazar was not a cruel angel. Unlike others in the Host, especially in recent centuries, his brother did not speak to inflict punishment. Balthazar was remarkably non-judgmental in that regard. He did not, however, practice empathy either, resulting in sharp comments that were bitter only in the truth of them. His words often stung more than cruelty ever could because of that validity.

The angel, remorseful that he had not answered the human's pleas sooner, prayed to his Father that the man had not sought help in darker places. He added a second, silent entreaty that the brother had not perished, though he had less hope for it. Humans died. It was also 'what they did.' Castiel took some solace in knowing there was little he could have done, had he come. Preferential treatment was not acceptable, not against the natural order of things and not without authorization from higher up the chain of command than a foot soldier.

He closed his eyes and extended his senses, sure that he could find the soul that had cried out to him with just a little more effort. The task had seemed unnecessary previously, given he thought he had a location for the human. It may have been faster to do this from the start, he reasoned, but it would have been far more difficult from across an ocean.

"I've found him." Castiel pulled his senses away from Sioux Falls, South Dakota and focused back on the hospital waiting room and his expectant brother. "They are not far."

Balthazar made a gesture with his hands that Castiel interpreted as _'get going then'_ , in a voice that sounded annoyingly akin to his brother, actually. He spared the other angel a glance that was bordering on annoyed – about as expressive a reaction one could ever hope to get out of Castiel – and spread his wings to fly.

The floor trembled, disrupting both angels in their pre-flight movements. The humans around them stumbled and faltered as the ground shook. Then the walls joined in and objects scattered throughout the room began to vibrate and rattle. The light fixtures above started flickering, and both angels exchanged perplexed expressions.

"Earthquake!" A nurse shouted as she wrapped herself across another human lying in a bed equipped with wheels.

"Here?" a male responded back, just as confused as the two angels who stood amid them, feeling the tremors through the waves of their incorporeal bodies and knowing it was no earthquake.

When the ground took on a finite rumble of the damned, Balthazar turned his surprised features to his brother. They felt it at the same time: the swarm of evil descending on the hospital. Castiel immediately took stock of the humans around them and knew, though he did not know where such evil in such proportion was coming from, they could not confront it here.

Balthazar apparently had the same thought, as he grabbed Castiel's arm and spread his wings. "Fly!"

The two angels launched themselves from the Evanston emergency room as fast as their wings could carry them. A mass of formless, writhing demons followed after.

-o-o-o-

The fastest of the beasts, the ones weighed down by less sin and years in the pit, gained on them as they fled to the nearest unpopulated area. Several straggles of black smoke managed to swarm around the tip of Balthazar's wing, clinging to the dusty brown feathers, and he went down hard with a cry.

Castiel banked immediately, dive bombing after his brother. He flapped his wings harshly at the demon clinging to his kin, sharp edges of his primaries a weapon all their own. The angel felt a swell of relief when the creature screeched and released Balthazar's wing, but the damage was already done. Castiel held tightly to his brother, helping the injured angel land on the ground far smoother than his previous trajectory would have permitted.

"Your wing," he said immediately, needing to know the extent of Balthazar's injury. He pulled his blade from the depths of his grace, and brandished it at an incoming demon. The creature died quickly, little match for the wrath of one of God's finest. Castiel dispatched of two more quickly, earning them a moment respite as the fastest of the demons were all dealt with at the tip of his blade.

The rest of the hoard would not take long to catch up.

Balthazar spread the appendage experimentally, but immediately crumpled it back to his side with a flinch. He shook his head. "No good."

Castiel twisted his blade in his grip, worry gnawing at his internals. He had hoped the injury was not so severe as to hinder their flight. The strength of the demon stench seconds before it had swarmed the hospital indicated a large number of enemies. Flight was a far more favorable option than confrontation, especially with only the two of them. Where the hoard had come from or why there was such a presence of hell spawn on Earth, Castiel could not fathom.

"Very well, we will fight," he spoke calmly, a millennia of training and battle soothing his feathers and quieting his worries. There would be time for questions after they survived the battle.

Balthazar shook his head, pushing at his brother. "Go. Find that human."

Castiel's face pinched in confusion and clear disagreement. The human? He was hardly the angel's concern now. The incoming demons and his injured brethren were the clear priorities.

"Please," his brother scoffed at the look. "I can still fight, and it'll take more than a couple demons to take _me_ down."

"Balthazar, the man is not of import-"

"He was important enough for you to come down here, wasn't he?" The angel folded his injured wing behind his back, blade sliding into his hand in preparation of the fight to come. "This amount of hell spawn won't go unnoticed. The Host will be dispatched, and you won't get another chance, Castiel."

The angel did not understand why Balthazar would push this, but there were many things he did not understand about his brother. Yet, he spoke the truth. Castiel was not disobedient by nature; to have disregarded the orders of his superiors to come to the aid of a human's call… Well, Castiel didn't know why he'd done it, but he could not deny the pull that had led him to do so.

He offered Balthazar his blade. It was tied to his own grace, but his brother would be able to wield it. Hopefully, the addition of another weapon would guarantee his cocky words were not misplaced.

Balthazar just smiled and pushed his hand back. "Keep it. Your luck is terrible, Cassie. The beasties will probably all follow you and leave me alone."

The angel tilted his head, his features shifting in an unamused way.

Although Balthazar always took great joy in the way Castiel never did get a joke, he sobered some at his companion's unrelenting concern and equal rigidity. Wrapping his hand around Castiel's, he pushed his brother's blade more firmly to the angel's chest. "Go. Find that human. And I'll meet you in Zachariah's office for one of his rousing speeches on self-restraint."

Castiel waivered. Partly because of the reminder that there was no way they could keep their Earth-side jaunt a secret. Even if Heaven did not send a squad their way to disperse the demons, Castiel would have to report such a mass of hell spawn, as well as the troublesomely fast response to their arrival in Evanston. Another part of him hesitated, worry flickering through his grace that he would find himself standing in their superior's office alone, without his friend by his side.

"I'll be fine, brother," Balthazar spoke softly, knowing the other angel's thoughts as clearly as though they were written on his face. Castiel never had been any good at hiding the emotions he wasn't supposed to have. "Go. I'll catch you later."

Castiel spared his brother one last look before he took to the skies. The tips of his obsidian wings wrapped his sibling in a quick embrace of comradery and strength before he was gone. Balthazar turned to the south, where the approaching cloud of black was almost upon him.

"Sorry, Cassie," he whispered, raising his blade and sparing a quick glance back at his injured wing.

-o-o-o-

Castiel pushed his brother's strife from his thoughts as he flew across forests and rocky mountain ranges in the blink of an eye. Balthazar could handle himself, and it would take a large number of demons to even hamper an angel, let alone take one down.

Instead, he focused on the soul that called to his grace, begging to be found even if its voice remained determinedly silent. Castiel touched down in the house the human's soul resonated from less than a minute after he had left his brother. The home was old, with stacks of books and artifacts of ancient, supernatural origins scattered here and there.

The home of a hunter, Castiel identified easily. Perhaps that explained the man asking for help from an angel that was listed little in scripture.

Voices drew him into the main room of the house, and Castiel's grace flared at the presence of a demon in the center of the room. She was safely contained within a devil's trap, and a human stood before her, gun trained on her human form.

Castiel stared in shock at the Colt, even as it fired on the demon and smote her being as succinctly as he himself could have. The man behind the special gun lowered it, a flash of anger crossing his face followed by a calm that any warrior who had lost soldiers in the field would understand.

The angel's grace reverberated with the man's soul, and Castiel stared, surprise coloring his features, at the man who had called out to him so many times in recent months.

He seemed…ordinary, really. A fine specimen of humanity, the angel supposed, but not what he had been expecting. Not that Castiel knew what he had been expecting. Perhaps someone…different.

The hunter crossed the room, unaware of the divine being watching him from another plane as he knelt beside the downed demon. Castiel had half a mind to stop him, but he could sense no demonic presence left in the young woman, or in the house at all.

He frowned, however, when he sensed something else. The angel tilted his head to the side, gaze roaming slowly through the room to settle on a doorway just past a desk and disheveled bookshelves. There was a door he could see beyond, partially cracked and leading to a set of stairs.

Castiel left behind the human who had prayed so fervently for him and descended those steps. There was something dark still residing within the house, but it was no demon. He found himself in a basement, navigating towers of boxes and more books until he came to a surprising sight. There was another room within this floor. It was made entirely of iron, a heavy door left open to reveal a room designed entirely around supernatural wards and traps. The angel stepped into the space after confirming no angelic warding was present, admiration flaring for the human that had built such an ingenious safe-room.

His thoughts, distracted by the clever space, stopped altogether at the sight of two humans, asleep on various furniture against one side of the circular room. Castiel frowned as the darkness flared again, and he took a step towards the sleeping men. He held his hand out over them both, faltering when his grace flared in repulsion at the youngest. There was evil in his blood, writhing with the same black essence as the demons who had attacked him and his brother moments ago.

Castiel drew back in horror, staring down at a boy tainted by demon blood. How it had gotten there, he did not know, but the infection was growing. It was spreading through his being and beginning to seep its way into the man's heart and soul. It would take him over if Castiel did not cleanse him of it now.

The angel reached his hand out to do just that, but the boy frowned in his sleep, head twitching to the side, showing signs of waking. The process of removing the taint, if he even could, would not be a pleasant one. Castiel paused long enough to consider the options, before he reached out for the human's mind. He would ensure he was properly asleep and would not wake to what the angel had to do.

He cast his grace out in search of the sleeping man's conscience. Castiel's features furled as he realized it was not where it should be. The boy's mind currently resided in the other human lying beside him. That was…unexpected. They were dream sharing. Castiel followed the trail of the younger man's conscience into that of his father's and found himself in a darkened factory in a world that did not exist, built by the power of a Baku.

The angel stared in open surprise at the pipes and walls around him. The hunter whose mind they were in was collapsed on the ground. The young man he had followed here was standing with an arm outstretched at the beast that created this place.

Baku was quite large for its kind, body bloated from the nightmares, hopes, and dreams of many humans. Castiel's gaze hardened on this creature who had clearly lost its way.

The dream beast was born of a god other than his Father, but he had never been intended to do harm. The Baku were peaceful and aided humans in their sleep by eating the various forms of darkness that so easily gripped their fragile minds. This one had gotten greedy.

Castiel gathered his grace, intending to strike the beast. He would purify it and collapse the dream. But before he could, the creature started screaming, his soul crying out in pain as chunks of the darkness he had consumed – and which had consumed him – were violently torn from his being.

The angel transferred a stunned and horrified gaze to the boy with the demon blood, who stood mere feet away. His hand stretched towards the beast, eyes closed in concentration and soul yearning to do good, despite the anger and fear vibrating throughout his body. The terrible darkness within him flared and grew as the boy sourced it for his purpose, trying to cleanse the beast in the most painful of ways.

The angel did not know if he intended such harm, but he had to stop it either way. This purification was cruel. And it was destroying more than its intended victim. The darkness that gave the boy such powers would consume him too if he continued.

Castiel turned to the beast, who writhed and screeched and begged for death in a language the human did not speak. The angel could listen to it no longer. He gathered his power and struck the Baku, smiting the poor creature with the might of Heaven and an explosion of white light.

-o-o-o-

The angel came back to his heavenly body with a deep breath and an ache in his grace he knew no injury was responsible for. The boy with the demon blood woke with a gasp and staggered upright out of the chair he had been asleep in. Panicked eyes sought for his father, who woke far slower. That human had been asleep much longer, the angel could tell, and was the intended victim of the Baku's greed.

Castiel turned to leave, pausing as the boy's soul flared in relief at the first words his father mumbled. The angel knew he should be repulsed by the evil flowing through the human's veins and the manner in which he had sought that power and applied it. But the man's soul swirled with love and hope and care in a way that only humans ever did, and Castiel could not bring himself to be as revolted as he should be.

Evil once more flickered on the edges of his senses, and Castiel turned his gaze and grace upward. The house began to shake, and he knew he was out of time. With a quick look back to the two humans to ensure they were well and truly free of the Baku's hold, followed with a periphery search of the first floor for the humans there as well, Castiel took to the sky as fast as he could before the hoard of demons could overtake the house.

They swarmed the structure as he burst through the roof, clipping at his wings and launching themselves after his quickly fleeing form.

-o-o-o-

There were more of them than there should be. The formless demons giving chase were not only too many in number for Hell's limited presence on Earth, but the swarm seemed no smaller than what had first attacked the hospital. Castiel prayed to his Father that Balthazar had been right about his terrible luck, that their persistence in coming after him and their undiminished numbers were not a sign of his brother's demise.

Castiel flew northwest until he hit the great mountain range that split North America. He turned north and sped ever faster into the wilderness of his Father's creation. The angel raced as fast as his wings could carry him until he sensed no human souls for many miles. He dove into the untamed forests beneath him and landed on the ground in dense woods.

The trees would hamper his own fighting, but the lack of openness would hinder the demons as well, and bottleneck their attempts to surround him from all sides. It was not a great place for battle, but it was better than a human settlement or an open field.

Castiel pulled his blade from his grace, the celestial alloy manifesting atom by atom until it settled in his hand as a comforting weight. The cries and screeches of the approaching hoard filtered through the trees. The great giants rustled and shuddered in the presence of evil, giving Castiel a warning he did not need, before screaming smoke descended through the canopy and was on him.

The Warrior of God cast all thoughts from his mind but those of battle. There were more demons than he had feared, and thoughts of Balthazar facing this alone were terribly hard to banish. But he focused on the fight, knowing he could not learn of his brother's fate if he perished in the forest today.

Demons fell beneath his blade, others smote beneath his terrible, divine wrath. But it was not nearly enough, and the smoke persisted from every side. Castiel was beginning to tire. Their numbers were fewer, but now the formless creatures were hanging back. Those that had attacked with malicious intent and little thought lay dead beneath the angel's feet, black essence soaking the earth. What remained were wiser. Older.

Castiel turned slowly in a circle, regarding each hovering cloud with a glare that dared them to attack. To see what he was worth.

A trill broke the air. One of the demons vibrated, smoke shaking along its wisps and edges. Another joined in, and soon after all remaining demons were screeching with vibrations. Castiel winced at the mounting battle cry, but refused to let it intimidate him. He raised his blade, locking eyes with the leader of the haunt.

A demon broke formation and charged him from the left. Castiel swept his arm to the side, intent to cut the creature down but already knowing it was a trap.

Lighting struck through the forest, striking the demon with the brilliance of God. Castiel shielded his gaze from the smiting as the demons shrieked in sudden fear. Angels descended from the trees, slamming into the ground. A full flight of vesseled warriors, twelve in total, quickly dispatched the remaining demons.

Castiel finished off the creature who floated, dumbfounded, beside him and had intended to end his life only seconds ago. It went down with a gargle and a fizzle. The angel lowered his blade to his side, turning to the flight commander with military discipline.

"Ishim," he greeted his brother with a dip of his head, recognizing the vessel he had once fought beside when he belonged to this unit. The commander did not return the gesture, staring down at the smaller angel with stoicism that bordered on disdain. Of course, Ishim had never much liked Castiel, especially once he had been awarded his own division of soldiers. The commander stowed his blade, and Castiel did the same.

"Castiel. Your presence is not authorized on Earth," he began with no preamble, gesturing to two of his angels. They flanked either side of Castiel but he put up no resistance. The angel had no intention of denying his actions.

"Yes. I will return with you to Heaven to await punishment for my disobedience," he answered by rote, unflinching in his duty. "But I did not travel alone. Balthazar was with me. We were separated and he was injured. We must find him and aid him in battle, need be."

The angel standing just behind Ishim on his left, in a vessel Castiel knew well, stepped forward. Her eyes were sympathetic where her superior's were cold. Benjamin presented Castiel an angel blade, regret coloring the grace behind her vessel's face. Castiel's chest swelled with grief, recognizing Balthazar's blade instantly and the grace dripping from its sharp edge.

"No," he whispered, accepting the weapon with numb fingers.

"Balthazar perished in battle. His blade was all that was left when we arrived," Ishim reported, tone never changing from the bored drawl. Castiel flinched at it, but buried the emotion down deep within his grace. It could be felt another time, when not faced with a reprimand and a garrison of his brothers who had likely saved his life, even if they could not save Balthazar's. "Perhaps it's as I thought, Castiel. You were not ready for your own command."

The words might have caused a flare of indignation and anger in the angel before. Castiel had earned his flight, and under the grueling and often cruel command of Ishim. But such words did not matter now. He barely heard them, staring at the blade of his fallen brother, missing the look of distaste Benjamin sent their superior on Castiel's behalf.

Balthazar was dead.

 _We should never have come down here._

"Come," Ishim ordered, turning and spreading his wings.

The angels on either side of Castiel took him by the arms, though there was no need. He followed willingly, more than deserving of whatever punishment awaited him.

-o-o-o-

Zachariah regarded the angel before him with distaste. Little upstart, really. But Castiel did not have a record of disobedience, at least not since he had come under the Seraph's command. He had always been quiet, removed from much of the Host due to his oddities. Unfortunately, most of the Host were still favorable enough towards him, despite those idiosyncrasies. Zachariah didn't much care for him, but, then, he didn't much think of him, either. He was an ant in the farm digging what tunnels he was told to dig.

Unfortunately, his little flare of rebellion, while a relatively minor infraction in any other decade, could all but bring their carefully laid plans to a grinding halt. Things would be so much simpler for the higher ups if Heaven could play ignorant to the machinations of Hell as it stirred up the Apocalypse.

Now, now, Zachariah was going to have to reason out, in front of his men, why a swarm of demons were organized on Earth rather than milling about, causing individual, minor mayhem that Heaven didn't give a shit about.

"There were many," Castiel reported as stoically as the emotion-prone angel was able. He stood, stiff and formal, in the older angel's office. Zachariah could tell he was grieving the loss of his companion and was appeased some, knowing he could use that to his advantage. "More than should be present on Earth. I believe the forces of Hell are up to something."

Zachariah stood from his desk, irritation flaring at the angel's annoyingly accurate words spoken in front of multiple angels that did not need to know such things. "It is not your place to speculate on the movements of the enemy, _Castiel_."

The angel dipped his head in acknowledgement, but something about it set Zachariah's teeth on edge. Something about Castiel always did, though he'd yet to pinpoint just what that was.

"One of the Host is dead because of your little road trip." The angel flinched, and the Seraph decided to twist the knife to drive his point home. "Had you not endangered your brother, all of your brothers, Balthazar would still be alive."

Castiel's gaze dropped away from his superior, properly chastised. The guilt flowing off him was practically palpable. Perhaps it was the angel's flair for emotion that was the root of Zachariah's dislike.

He settled back at his desk, steepling his hands as he regarded the little upstart. The Seraph considered further punishment – perhaps something to help wipe those nasty emotions out of the soldier once and for all. But it was a tad extreme for a minor offense, and there were two angels in the room companionable to Castiel in ways that could rouse discussion among the masses should he be punished too unfairly.

"You will be demoted, for the time being, to second in command of your flight," Zachariah informed him nonchalantly. "Uriel will lead the unit in your stead."

Castiel dipped his head once more. Nothing in the shifting colors of his grace or the language of his being spoke in protest, and Zachariah was all the more pleased for it. Let the little upstart wallow.

"You will report to Malachi to show him this portal you traveled through and it will be sealed." The Seraph paused, pursing his lips in thought. "And any others you are aware of."

The angel shook his head in response. "I know only of the one we used. Balthazar was the one who found it."

Which meant he would need to order his men to find any other holes in their defenses and patch those up. When the truth came to light, there would be some in the Host who would surely disagree with Heaven's decision. When that happened, they needed to be locked up tight. Perhaps it was fortuitous that Balthazar had gotten himself killed. He had inadvertently alerted them to a potential security risk. He'd also been on Zachariah's list of angels likely to rebel when the time came.

"Dismissed."

"Sir."

Zachariah raised a brow in the angel's direction when he didn't immediately leave. Had his dismissal been unclear, in some way, or was the angel really just itching for more punishment?

"The demons?"

The Seraph frowned in general confusion. When the angel didn't say anything more, Zachariah waved the question away for the useless inquiry it was. "They were dealt with. End of story."

"But their numbers-"

"Are not your concern," Zachariah reiterated through clenched teeth, incredulous at the angel _still_ questioning his orders. Perhaps he did need to be reeducated after all. "The only reason demons showed up in the first place was because you and Balthazar decided to take a stroll downstairs. Since _that's_ not happening again anytime soon, problem solved! Unless you plan to get another of your brother's killed?"

The little angel paled horribly, losing all colors across his being. He dipped his head, the guilt that flooded across him in the absence of any other emotion was sadistically rewarding for the Seraph.

" _Dismissed_ , Castiel."

The angel bowed swiftly to his superior and left the room with two attending soldiers. Zachariah watched him leave, something about the little upstart bothering him even worse, now.

"Ramael." He beckoned the angel standing beside his desk, nothing more than a paper pusher, really, but one that could be easily cajoled into loyalty and obedience. He liked that in an angel. "Where was Castiel picked up?"

Ramael straightened to attention and glanced down at the stack of forms he was holding, running a finger along the report. "The Northern Territories of Canada. North American continent. He was a far distance from any human civilization, in a place called the Tlicho Lands. Location: sixty three point three eight nine degrees latitude by-"

Zachariah waved him into silence, five of his six faces clearly telling the subordinate to shut up. The Seraph stared at the closed doors of his office the little upstart had passed through less than a minute ago. An unpleasant thought was mixing with that annoyed feeling Castiel always caused in him.

"And where are the Winchesters now?"

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Castiel sat on the park bench in Arthur Staten's heaven, but he could not bring himself to enjoy the beauty and splendor of the man's world today. The loss of his brother stung more than any wound, and the guilt of his death ran deep.

He had not told Zachariah the reason for their disobedience in the first place, because the Seraph had not asked. Part of Castiel wondered if that, too, was disobedience. An omission of the truth was not the same as lying, but it could be argued a crime all its own.

Still, the matter seemed behind them, and Castiel tried to leave it there. It was difficult, as his mind did not seem to be in tune with his grace. Despite great efforts to move on from the tragedy of Balthazar, however honorable his death had been in battle, Castiel could not stop his mind from lingering. Questioning.

There were too many things not fitting into place. The number of demons present in one location, the swarm that acted more like bees in defense of a hive than demons on the hunt, the swiftness with which they were on him and Balthazar, and then again on him. It was like they had been waiting – ready – for the angels.

Which made no sense, given that he and Balthazar had not premeditated their trip to Earth before that day. So if not the two of them specifically, were the demons expecting angels in general?

Why would hell spawn be organized on Earth, awaiting Heaven's response?

Something dark and ugly rooted itself in Castiel's lower torso. He did not know what it was, and part of him did not want to know what it was, but he knew it was nothing good.

 _Obey_.

That quiet, compelling voice which often spoke to him when he sought revelation had returned some days ago. It usually found him in places like Arthur's park, when he sat in the silence of a human's mind and looked for peace. Unless in the presence of Balthazar. It never had much to say, then. His grace ached at the realization that his brother would never again be there to quiet the voice that demanded obedience and silenced his questioning.

But not listening to it is what got his brother killed in the first place.

Resolve filled Castiel like a leaden weight and he stood from the bench. He pushed his worries and doubts, the ugly knots in his torso and mind, and the fragmented thoughts of disobedience far, far away from him. If the human prayed again, he vowed not to hear his pleas, not to feel the curiosity, or answer the yearning call to come to his aid.

He was an Angel of the Lord. A Warrior of God.

He served Heaven. He did not serve man.

The angel left the Arthur's paradise to return to his brothers and resume his heavenly duties.


	33. Season 1: Interlude II

_**Summary**_ _: Cas pulled his broken body over the grass-covered graves beneath them. The buried dead that he and Sam would soon be among. But Dean was alive and only a few feet away. Only a few feet and he could fix this. He would fix it. There was still time: time to send him back, time to make the other choice, time to choose a different road. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **Chapter Warnings:**_ _Azazel_ _'s turn! Our favorite Prince and Princess of Hell are up to no good as we see th_ _e first of Hell's big change of plans._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 1: Interlude II

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

For the first time in the forty eight years he had spent on Earth, the last thirty four of which he had searched tirelessly and often fruitlessly for Lucifer's true vessel, Azazel wished he could be back in Hell. The pit was not a pleasant place, that was certain, and the Prince of Hell was no true fan of it. Not the darkness of its deepest layers, or the heat of hellfire, or the screams of the damned. Azazel held no love of his birthplace, only a love for Lucifer.

It was for his true Father, the angel who had given him a second birth, that he clawed his way through the depths of the damned to rise on Earth in search of him. He had tried the harder way – to burrow through level after level of Hell's infinite reaches in search of the cage. But he had wasted centuries looking and never come close.

Now, staring at his ruined arm, he wished to be surrounded by hellfire once more. Hell had a way of both amplifying and nulling pain. It was a land of paradoxes, and Azazel desired that most right now. Lilith could possibly heal the wretched limb without the power of a soul deal, or at the least lessen the annoying hindrance it had become. Crowley, at the very least least, would be able to coerce some human sucker into a deal strong enough to fix the blasted thing.

Azazel had considered summoning him for just such a purpose several times since he had let the Winchesters out of his grasp.

It would have to wait, however. He would not waste the time and effort spent capturing the boys or luring John in just to ease a nuisance. The arm could wait. His demon had done as commanded, landing all three Winchesters in the nearest hospital almost the moment they'd fled from his grasp. The eldest son was lying in a coma on life support, unlikely to live much longer.

John would sell his soul to save him, Azazel was sure of it. He just needed to be patient. And, in case the hunter did not summon him directly, Crowley and his crossroad demons needed to be free to make the deal.

So, here Azazel was, forced to communicate with Lucifer's Firstborn through a chalice of blood once more. The situation may be sparing him some unpleasantness, actually, given Lilith's ungodly shrieks coming through the blood. Hers were not the only screams either, hence the unpleasantness he was likely being spared. She was pissed, and rightly so, given Azazel had just relayed that Dean Winchester was walking around with a little chunk of angel in his chest.

He was somewhat remiss to not be witness to the expression on her face, though. Lilith threw a bitch fit like no other, and it could be quite entertaining if you were not one of her intended targets. Another demon screamed for mercy through the blood, an unfortunate causality of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Is he a vessel already?" Once the cries had died out, leaving the blood silent but for her heavy breaths of exertion and rage, she managed to calm enough to speak with him.

"Nope," Azazel popped the last consonant. "Just a sliver of grace snuggled right up to that righteous soul of his."

No wonder his daughter had been ousted when she kissed him. His blood had been foul: completely unbearable, tainted with that righteous poison, created by the smallest of angelic influences. With an angel's grace sitting pretty in his chest, Azazel had no doubt Dean truly had tasted sulfur on her tongue.

"How the hell does an angel's grace get in a human?"

The words were spat with such disgust and fury it brought a lazy smile to Azazel's face. He shrugged regardless, not that Hell's Princess could see the gesture. She'd probably hear it in his words, though. "Not easily, that's for sure. I didn't think the cloud hoppers were that creative. They've been monitoring their vessel this whole time without ever leaving the pearly gates. Feeding him information. It's ingenious, really."

It was also damn close to what they had been planning for Sam. Which was infuriating, even if one could respect an opponent's cleverness.

"And pumping him up while they're at it!" Lilith screamed, pointing out that other tidbit Heaven was copying them on. Azazel wasn't sure if who in the lead, though. If he'd gotten Sammy to drink that last container of blood, they'd surely be winning the mini game.

It rankled him that he hadn't managed it, but the Prince of Hell was nothing if not patient, and he knew they had time yet.

But if the angels were introducing bits of grace into Dean Winchester over time, he was going to be just as powerful an archangel vessel as Sam would be once he reached his peak on demon blood. So much for their little one-upper plan. Heaven and Hell were back on even footing for now.

"It doesn't seem to be doing much in the way of protecting him," Azazel reasoned out loud. A little silver lining, perhaps. "It's not enough grace to heal him when injured or shield him from attack. But if they start doing some more cloud-seeding before we can get to him…"

"They'll interfere with our plans, and we'll be fucked." Lilith always did have a way with words. "We're going to have to change it. All of it. From now on, our backup plans will need backup plans."

"What of the prophet?" The Prince of Hell idly picked at the dead flesh on his arm, peeling away a chunk of blackened skin like a discarded scale. "Did Crowley do as I asked?"

"Yes. For a demon who never shuts up about his numerous connections, he sure is slow at getting the simplest of information." The young voice was pouting and seething at the same time now. "He has a man watching the prophet, but there's an archangel tied to his ass. So even if he is helping the Winchesters, there's nothing we can do to stop it."

"For now." Azazel filed the information away, intent to speak more in depth with Crowley once John was secure in Alistair's capable hands. ""We'll start with the Hell Gate. We can't move forward with the plan until we get you topside, anyway."

The silence of the slowly bubbling blood was agreement enough from the Princess. After a moment, she asked, much more reasonably than any previous tone so far in the conversation, "What are we going to do about the angels?"

"Angel," Azazel corrected, eyes going unfocused as he thought back to that explosive power that activated the second his twisted essence made contact with the celestial purity. Angels and demons really weren't meant to mix. It had hurt like hell, for them both he figured. The boy was lucky to have survived it at all, but those were angels for you. Holier than thou, self-righteous bags of dicks. No better than demons; they just thought they were. Which, in the Prince of Hell's humble opinion, made them far worse. "It's only the one, and not even that. An infinitesimal percentage of an angel."

"If it's guarding Dean Winchester, one percent or one hundred doesn't make a difference. We'll never get his soul in Hell."

"Oh yes, we will." He was not prepared to give up all their years of planning and careful execution because one unpredicted chunk of grace now stood in their path. "One angel can be dealt with; we'll find a way. Until then…I think if Heaven wants to play dirty, it's only fair we join their game."

The silence was a curious one this time, and though Lilith's response was drawled, it was also full of the scaling malice that was their birthright. "What did you have in mind?"

"I think we need to get Sam a little guardian of his own. Turnabout is fair play, and all that."

"A demon?" Lilith sounded thrilled, the excitement in her voice already suggesting she had the perfect one in mind. "I have a girl for the job. I've been grooming her for this for decades."

"No," Azazel interrupted before she could get going. Lilith was excellent at cultivating the cream of the crop of demonhood. Truly, she had a gift for it, which is likely what Lucifer had first seen in her thousands of years ago. But hell-spawn was not what they needed to win this game. Not _yet_ , anyway. "The grace in Dean's chest will spot a demon a mile away. Save your girl, we'll need her still."

"If not a demon, then what? A human? They'll never stay loyal. Even a soul deal won't be enough leverage to assure their cooperation."

By the disgust in her tone, Azazel could already tell that anything other than human or demon would be immediately nixed. She didn't much care for the pagans or their monsters, and trusted them even less. But Azazel thought he had good odds of persuading her to see things his way this time around.

"No. Not a human." The Prince thought back to a conversation they'd had long, long ago. "For this, we need to go with something less…biblical. Something Heaven isn't prepared to deal with."

Now Hell's Princess was clearly frowning so sharply it came through every word. "We are _not_ opening Purgatory. We're having enough trouble with one Hell Gate!"

Azazel barked out a laugh, though it curled into a purr at its tail end. "Now _that_ is an interesting thought. Not the one I was thinking, but veryinteresting…"

Oh, the things the Leviathans could do to upset an Apocalypse… _Very_ interesting indeed.

On the other end of the conversation, Lilith growled low in her throat, tiring of this game. The blood rippled and spat with her growing impatience, and Azazel didn't need his Hell-born sixth sense to know he was wearing thin his tolerated presence.

"There are still things on this Earth yet that can give even Heaven's finest trouble. You told me once you thought you'd found where one of them was buried."

The blood went so still that the Prince of Hell, had he not known Lucifer's firstborn so well, might have thought their conversation cut short. Then it began bubbling ecstatically. Lilith didn't even have to say anything for the crimson liquid to relay her malicious grin as she caught on to his train of thought.

"You don't happen to remember where that was…?"

-o-o-o-

Azazel picked his way through the long-settled dust and dirt of the forgotten city. Occasionally, a solid crunch beneath his boot signaled a stray human remain, one of the few bones that hadn't disintegrated completely in the thousands of years since this settlement had been buried deep beneath the earth's crust by the wrath of a God.

It took time, working his way through crumbling structures, barely recognizable for the ancient things they once were. Most were gone completely. Only the edges of this city had survived annihilation by fire and brimstone. But the edges were all he needed, and eventually Azazel found his way to one of the few buildings still standing above the others, built with solid foundations and thick walls, meant to last through the ages. A tomb. A burial place for the kings and nobles and priests that once oversaw this great city.

The Prince of Hell entered through the half-collapsed doorway, a malicious grin on his face. Stairs led him down, down, down into the darkness until even his Hell-spawned eyes struggled to see the depths. He pulled out and twisted on a flashlight, amused at the modern technology lighting his way in such an old place. He ought to have brought a wooden stick and an oil-slicked rag. Done this Indiana Jones style.

Hey, even demons were entitled to their flights of fancy.

The flashlight lit his way down, level after level of buried, honored dead. Tombs lined the high-arching hallways he passed, some entombed in the walls, others built in the centers and sides of the rooms as stone coffins, impressive and ageless.

Finally, Azazel's feet touched the stone depths of the final floor. The deepest that the burial tomb went; the oldest of the kings concealed here. He shone his light throughout the circular room that stretched beyond the reach of the flashlight. Massive stone pillars supported the underground cavern, and the demon weaved his way between them, checking each erected tomb and sarcophagus.

It was on the twelfth stone entombment that the Prince of Hell found the first signs of what he was looking for. Etched in a ring about the walls of the sarcophagus, just beneath the lip of the heavy stone lid, were ancient symbols of a language long dead to the likes of Azazel. His face split with a grin as he reached out a hand, running calloused fingertips across the warding. The ancient spells lit faintly blue to his touch, glimmering in the castoff of his flashlight.

"This is it." He nodded to himself, agreeing out loud in a room filled with nothing but the dead and what he had come for. The demon dug a knife from his hip, tracing slow steps around the perimeter of the stone coffin, eyes scanning the carved symbols. "Ah-ha. There you are."

He reached out with the tip of his blade and made a careless, insignificant little flick to one of the heavier lines dug into the stone. The knife ate at the old work, catching on the stone and adding a thin little scratch of his own to the existing warding.

It flamed blue for a second before fizzling out with a pathetic pop. The words did not light again, and Azazel grinned, putting the knife and the flashlight on the lid of another tomb just behind him. He turned back to the sarcophagus and, now with the warding dismantled, dug the full weight of his demon-enhanced body into the stone lid. The Prince of Hell pushed with his mind as well as his hands, and the thing groaned and grumbled inch for inch as it slid and stuttered to the side until, finally, it toppled off of its stone walls and hit the floor with a thunderous crack.

The bits of dust and old death things that clung about the place, stirred by more movement than it had seen in millennia, subsided with minimal affair. The demon paused by the side of the sarcophagus, eyebrows raised as he stared at the lip of the stone and the dark, cavernous depths beyond. Nothing moved.

With a frown, Azazel hauled himself up onto the base step of the coffin, forgoing caution and any scrap of decency or decorum that he'd never had to begin with. He hoisted himself with a groan, swinging a leg up and over the erect stone wall to straddle the top of it and peer down into the tomb.

His eyes lit yellow, glowing in the unnatural light of the flashlight in that very dark place. He grinned down at the body that lay, unmoving at the bottom of the stone grave, staring up at him with distrustful, angry, unnaturally green eyes.

"Well hello, Beautiful."

Azazel reached into the tomb, clasping at the lithe, feminine hand that reached back.


	34. Season 2: Chapter 1

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Reviews**_ _: Thank you so much for the support and wonderful, amazing, encouraging comments you sent my way, especially in response to my discouragement. I needed them, and though they didn't kick me out of my stupid writer's rut of darkness and misery, they kept me chugging at the story, even when I was so weighed down worrying about posting schedules and keeping you all waiting. You all pulled for me, and I'm going to keep pulling for you. I will spend some time this week trying to catch up with all the amazing comments you beautiful, beautiful people sent my way. Thank you so much for the support and encouragement._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Uh...I'm gonna mess with your heartstrings for the next... let's say three chapters. At least. #sorryNotSorry?_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 1

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean sat up slowly. His shoulders slumped in a manner as foggy and slow as his brain. He surveyed the space around him just as slowly, taking extra time to translate the white walls and beeping machines into recognizable information. Hospital. His mouth was a land of cotton, and he wet the roof repeatedly to get some saliva going. The room he was in was empty of other people. A private room, which didn't bode well, but Dean felt oddly uninjured, which was weird.

The only times he'd ever woken up in the hospital were the ones where he wasn't usually conscious upon arrival or damn near bleeding out if he was. Hunters didn't mess with government-funded medical aide unless they had no other choice.

Dean rolled his shoulders, wincing at the tightness of heavy muscles. He took in a deep breath, rubbing absently at his chest and the funny feeling there. It was like he couldn't get enough air in for how big his lungs felt, how empty his torso seemed. He added it to the list of weird he was making in his head.

"Sam?"

The hunter grimaced as he swung his legs off the side of the hospital bed. Dean catalogued the rest of his body. He felt banged up and heavy in a groggy sort of way, but overall nothing seriously hurt. He rose to his feet cautiously, but they held him with no complaints and he frowned at the white walls around him.

Why the hell was he here if he wasn't hurt?

Dean glanced around for his clothes, his bare feet abnormally cold on the hospital tile. All of him was abnormally cold. What, did nurses here not believe in heat? He was clad only in blue scrub pants and a white t-shirt, which really didn't seem enough for the chill in the air. But his civvies weren't anywhere in the room, and the hunter really hoped that didn't bode ill for the condition of his clothes, especially his dad's jacket.

Although if he was up and at 'em, he couldn't have come in too bad.

Dean made it to the door, which was open to the corridor beyond. There wasn't anyone immediately in the hallway as he stuck his head out, checking either direction. Not unheard of, but still kinda weird. He added it to the list as flashes of zombie movies stuck in his brain; opening and closing scenes of flicks like _Resident Evil_ and _28 Days Later_ running through his head. The rational part of his brain chuckled. He watched way too much television. The hunting part of his brain knew how crappy his luck could be and was busy thinking, ' _it's 2006, dumbass; demons are still developing the Croatoan virus and a Zombie Apocalypse isn't off the table yet.'_

Dean swallowed a little more heavily than he'd intended and turned back into his room. Maybe the hallways could wait until he saw some normal, living, non-decomposing humans wandering around. A hot nurse, even.

He froze, now facing into the room, and he blinked at the unconscious body lying on the bed he'd just climbed out of. _His_ unconscious body, intubated and covered in wires connected to a dozen beeping machines. There were casts around multiple limbs, and what wasn't wrapped in plaster was covered in thick layers of gauze. Chest, leg, shoulder, free arm. Patches of a bruised and swollen face were covered too.

Holy shit, that poor SOB looked dead.

One of the machines beeped, drawing his stunned attention to it. An EKG readout was beeping faster, numbers flashing higher on the monitor just over his body's head. Blood pressure and brain activity relayed blips and graphs on other machines on either side of the bed. The brain activity display was as smooth as the horizon in the middle of the Utah salt flats.

Dean was staring at his unconscious, unresponsive, dying body lying in a hospital bed ten feet away from his current self.

That made him a ghost – or a soon to be ghost.

"Son of a bitch!"

-o-o-o-

It took him another floor and several room searches later to find his brother. Sam was walking down the hallway in the same street clothes he'd worn when Azazel had taken them. Dean felt immediate relief at the sight of him upright and mostly uninjured.

"Sammy! Thank God, man-"

His kid brother walked right through him, causing Dean to shudder and ripple with sweeping cold. He stumbled backwards into the wall and had to physically shake the terrible sensation out of his not-body.

Right. Ghost.

Dean chased after his brother, catching up so he could circle him for a once over and assess whether he was actually okay or not. Sure, the kid was upright, but it wouldn't be the first time Sammy had neglected medical treatment when his family was hurting far worse. Martyrdom ran thick in the Winchester blood.

He was a bit more banged up than Dean last remembered him, though to be honest, the hunter was a bit hazy on everything after the demon decided to get personally acquainted with his soul. The kid had a cut above his left eye which was stitched closed, a couple scrapes on his face, neck, and the backs of his hands. There was some bruising spread across his left temple and cheek, and Dean surmised that he'd taken a bash to the head from a wide object.

Or maybe a wide object had taken a bash from his brother's head. Dread pooled in Dean's stomach. A car crash. Those injuries looked like the kind you got in a car crash. There had been an accident, with Sam driving in the front seat and…

"Dad."

He followed his brother down the hall, urging him to move his giant body faster and frantically hoping the cup of coffee in his hand was for their missing father.

"Tell me Dad's alright, Sammy," he begged his brother, already knowing the kid couldn't hear him but talking anyway. "Tell me he got us away from that yellow eyed bastard."

Sure enough, the sasquatch turned into a room a couple doors down, and Dean let out a hearty breath of relief at the sight of John Winchester sitting upright in the room's only bed. His right arm was done up in a sling and he had similar cuts and bruising as Sammy along the opposite side of his body.

Car crash for sure then. Dad had been sitting passenger side. It was hazy, but Dean remembered needing to warn them.

Right. Warn them, because he'd known the semi was going to plow into his Baby. Because it had happened before. Because he was from the future, it was 2006, and a demon had run them off the road. Dean looked around the room, then down at himself. Which meant this had happened before too.

Crap, he didn't remember being a ghost. He vaguely remembered waking up in the hospital after the crash, Sam telling him he'd totally been a spirit and they used a Ouija board of all things to communicate. Dean snapped his gaze back to his brother. Crap, he needed a Ouija board and he needed it right fucking now.

The next thing that was going to happen was their dad selling his soul to bring Dean back.

"No," Dean sputtered, fists tightening as he stood in the doorway. Dread filled his stomach and panic flooded his chest, because the last time John had been lying in a hospital bed with his son dying a floor away, Dean had woken up and his Dad never did again. "No, not now. Not _now_! What the hell, we should have _months_!"

It was May. John Winchester died in July – July nineteenth, ten-forty-one a.m., two thousand and fucking six – and it was _May_.

"What else did the doctors say about Dean?" John pried the lid off the coffee cup, blowing gently against the rising steam and wincing as the expansion of his lungs jostled his bruised torso and broken collar bone.

"Sam, man, tell me you can hear me!" Dean moved right up to his brother, standing across their father's bed from him and waving his arms uselessly. "You gotta stop him. Sammy!"

He yelled at the top of his lungs, but he already knew it wouldn't make any difference.

Sam was quiet, staring down at the edge of the sheets. There was anger on his face, along with fear. "Nothing. Just that there's not… He's in a coma."

There was a tense pause to the room as Sam shuffled on his feet and John stared at him expectantly. The young hunter stood awkwardly for a moment before he sunk, slowly, into the plastic chair beside John's bed. "The, uh, damage to his chest coupled with the blood loss… They don't think he'll wake up."

Their dad looked away, emotions of his own warring across his face. Dean wished he could remember the last time he'd landed himself in this position so he could skip out on watching his family fall apart again, knowing he was the cause. If he could remember that nothing in the conversation was vital, or if he knew whatever they might say that was, he could just leave. He could focus on getting back in his body so his father didn't sell his soul to do it for him.

But he didn't know, because he couldn't remember it. And there was no way in hell was letting John Winchester out of his sight for the next forty-eight hours. Nevermind that he should have had _months_ before this happened. Nevermind that Time seemed determined to screw him at every turn. Dean clenched his teeth and fought back the overwhelming wave of _it's not fair_ that screamed from every muscle.

Whining about it wouldn't do him any good now. He had to save his dad, and to do that he had to get a Quija board.

"Okay. Okay, think, Winchester, think. How do I get you to hear me?" Dean paced along his brother's bed for a moment before the lightbulb hit. He didn't need to make Sam hear him, he just needed to get his attention. And doing that, as a ghost, shouldn't be that hard at all.

Dean might not remember being a spirit the last time this happened, but it wasn't the only time he'd been one.

The hunter focused on the cup of coffee his dad had just set down on the little bed table. Dean didn't hesitate, pulling back his arm and swinging his fist right through it. He spun with the force of the punch he'd fully expected to land. Nothing. Dean stared back at the unmoved coffee cup, then the hand that had gone right through it.

"What the hell?" He let out an exasperated noise and tried again. And again. "Son of a bitch, I forgot how hard this was."

He hadn't spent time as a spirit in years. He resumed his earlier pacing, staring at the coffee cup and ignoring the conversation his father and brother were having. He tried to remember what that kid – Cole – had taught them back when death had decided to take a holiday for a couple weeks. That kid had been as Amityville-badass as ghost kids got.

Dean stopped moving as memory turned into realization. He and Sam had turned themselves into ghosts so they could talk to the kid whose spirit was left behind. Their only lead in the case, actually. Cole had been haunting his childhood home and driving his poor mom to the brink of emotional sanity all because Death wasn't around yet and the town reaper had been nabbed by demons. One of the seals. Dean remembered being with the kid when a second reaper had come to town to rectify death's little holiday.

Tessa.

The hunter spun around, scanning the room. He may not remember much of their first meeting outside of what she had shown him that day in Cole's bedroom, but Dean could put the pieces together. He was damn sure _this_ was their first meeting.

So where was she?

Dean popped his head out of his dad's room, looking up and down the hallway. When no petite little thing with black hair and a cold smile showed up, Dean turned back to his family and put the MIA reaper on the backburner – for now. She'd show eventually and he'd tell her to shove off whenever she did. He had more important things to worry about than Death's messenger.

John was handing his youngest a list of supplies to have Bobby wrangle up and Sam was staring down at the piece of paper with a frown. Dean read over his shoulder even as his brother listed a couple of the things aloud.

That dread immediately came back as he recognized the ingredients, clear as day.

"Protection," John answered with a small, weary smile.

"Like hell," Dean growled back, glaring at his dad and then looking up at his brother, anger shifting to panic. "It's not for protection, Sammy! That's stuff's for summoning a demon. Don't you bring him any of it!"

But Sam was already moving for the door.

"No, Sam, don't listen to him! He's gonna make a deal, damn it!"

Sam left the room, completely deaf to Dean's warnings. The spirit followed after his brother, panic rising as he tried to catch his attention, swiping left and right at anything in the hallway he could knock into. His fist went through every time and his desperation mounted.

He needed more time.

Sam stepped into the elevator and Dean raised his arm to punch his brother straight in the face, uncaring if the damn move didn't do a thing to touch him. At least it would be cathartic to the building frustration.

A flash of tan caught his attention and the hunter froze, staring down the hall to his left. The doors of the elevator closed with a ding, Dean still standing there with his fist raised.

"Cas."

The angel stood at the end of the hall, staring straight at him. He was wearing that damn beautiful, familiar trench coat, his dress shirt askew and blue tie still missing. Dean lowered his arm, a weird mixture of relief and sorrow filling him so quickly he was soon overwhelmed, feeling like he couldn't handle any more surprises without just about losing it.

The angel turned and walked around the corner.

 _Shit_.

Dean shook himself, stowing his emotional crap, and headed after him, calling the angel's name.

-o-o-o-

"What else did the doctors say about Dean?"

Sam stared at the edges of the thin hospital blanket draped over his father's legs as he mumbled something. He wasn't even sure what; his mouth was working while his brain lagged eons behind.

Dean was in a coma. Dean was in a _coma_.

Had this happened last time? Sam closed his eyes against the swell of terror and damn near insurmountable loss. He hoped it had. He prayed to God it had, because that meant Dean pulled through.

A hand landed on his forearm, the weight of the cast heavy against his skin. Sam looked up at his father, leaning forward painfully on the bed, a clear wince in his features, as he tried to comfort his youngest son.

"He'll pull through, Sammy. Your brother's tough."

The youngest Winchester cleared his throat, looking up and away to clear the water from his eyes. John didn't mention it, just settled back into the pillows with a grimace. He reached forward with his unbroken arm, swiping his wallet off the small table attached to the bed.

The coffee cup rattled slightly on the table, and Sam frowned at it before his father held out a card for him and drew his attention back.

"Here, give them my insurance."

Sam took the card, looking down at it with a disbelieving smirk, feeling a momentary bit of laughter in the dark. "Ellroy McGillicutty?"

John returned the same silver-lining, world-weary smile. "And his two loving sons. Are they asking questions?"

Sam blew a humorless breath of air out his nostrils. "The cops asked a few. They wanted to know why you had a gun with an empty clip and a recently fired antique."

The EMTs that had pulled them from the crushed car found John with both Dean's .45 and the Colt. Sam hadn't realized his father had retrieved Dean's gun from the cabin, but he wasn't all that surprised. John had given each of them an ivory-gripped gun when they'd been old enough. When they'd become true hunters. It was Dean's favorite weapon and one of his most cherished possessions he never went on a hunt without it. The fact that John had taken time to retrieve it caused a swell of emotion and a surprising amount of forgiveness in the youngest Winchester.

"Where's the Colt?"

And there went those happy feelings. Sam tried to ignore the flare of hurt and anger that sprung up as his father inevitably asked about that damn gun. At least he had asked about Dean first.

"Cops have it in evidence. I told them about the cabin." He looked away from John at that, burying down the memories he didn't feel like dealing with at the moment. The cops had needed answers and the best lie Sam could think of was the truth. "I told them me and my brother were kidnapped. That you were a former marine and came after us once you got the ransom demand."

His father chuckled, a wry smile on his face as he leaned back against the pillows. "Dean would like that. Sounds just like a movie."

Sam smiled back, having had similar thoughts when he was spinning the tale for the local law enforcement. "It helped explain his injuries, too. Doctors tend to have questions when you come in looking like you went a dozen rounds with a serial killer."

Silence settled on the room again like a shroud, the roller coaster of emotions between both men a sad reminder of the state of all three of them. Sam chewed on his lip the moment he realized it was trembling. John was silent as he watches at his youngest son, feeling his pain but never showing it.

"I need you to get that gun."

Sam closed his eyes and pretended he hadn't heard his father say that.

"Sammy."

Brown eyes flashed back open. "Your son is dying and you're worried about the Colt?"

John's jaw clenched against the insolent tone, but he fought through the anger that surged at his youngest's flagrant but oh-so-common insubordination. "That demon is hunting us as surely as we're hunting it. The gun may be our only card."

Sam ground his teeth and spoke through a clenched jaw. "They'll release it back to us as soon as they clear the cabin. A day or two, tops."

"You wanna give that bastard two days to catch up to us? Or time to steal it from the cops? You and I both know a demon could waltz right into a police station without breaking a sweat." John skewered him with a pointed look. Sam held firm for stubbornness alone, at least until his dad started pulling back the covers. "Fine, I'll get it myself."

The youngest Winchester had half a mind to let his stubborn, suicidal father do just that, but reality and the fact that he didn't want his dad dead (or arrested) any more than he did his brother, made him finally relent. He agreed to break into the police evidence locker after nightfall. Luckily, it was a small town and the local LEOs seemed pretty friendly as far as cops went. Security would most likely be lax, and the station less manned while officers were out looking for a kidnapper and torturer.

Thanks to Dean, it wouldn't even be his first time breaking into one.

"You gotta clean out the trunk of the Impala before some junk man sees what's inside, too," his dad added, picking up his wallet and pulling out a piece of notepaper, the type you write grocery lists on.

"I called Bobby already," Sam replied with a bitter smirk. When Dean saw the state of his car, he was going to kill every demon in a three state radius. Sam would gladly be there to see it. "He's going to tow the car back to his place."

John raised surprised eyebrows. "From Michigan?"

Sam shrugged with a huff of breath. "Dean would kill us if we left it here. Doesn't matter how bad a shape she's in."

His dad nodded with a knowing smile. "Alright, well, you go meet up with Bobby. Get that Colt, and bring it back to me. And watch out for hospital security."

Sam almost rolled his eyes as he stood and made his way around the bed. After stealing a gun from a police station, smuggling it into a hospital would be the easy part. "I think I've got it covered."

"Hey, here." The younger hunter paused as his father held out that piece of paper for him. He grabbed it with a curious frown. "I made a list of things I need. Have Bobby pick 'em up for me."

Sam read through the list, some of them aloud. He looked at his dad with a raised brow. "What's this stuff for?"

"Protection," John answered with a smile that only made Sam more suspicious. He glanced down at the list again before turning on his heel and exiting his father's hospital room. Mentally, he was going through the things on the list, trying to recall what spells some of them were for. But John had never let the boys mix with that stuff. If the hunting family needed spell work done, John had been the one to do it, or find someone else who could. Sam cursed not ever digging more into magic, especially now that Dean was dying and some hoodoo priest or witch may be their only option at recovery. He resolved to ask Bobby for a book or two. He'd certainly have the downtime for research with both brother and father out of commission.

As he got in the elevator, a chill racked through his body briefly, and his brow furled at the familiar, ghost like cold that surrounding him for only a second.

The doors closed and it was gone.

Sam stood frozen within the elevator, a crazy thought occurring to him. And once he'd thought it, he couldn't seem to let it go.

"Dean?" Brown eyes scanned the space almost nervously, as if expecting his brother to flicker into existence like the many ghosts he'd seen in his life. He checked behind him, spinning a quick circle in the elevator. "Dean, are you here?"

The elevator pinged and the doors opened to several expectant people. They stared at him, half turned around in the small space and talking to no one. Sam cleared his throat, smiled at them weakly, ignored the pull to his split lip and numerous cuts and bruises, and pushed through into the lobby of the hospital.

He turned and watched the elevator fill up with nurses and visitors, none of whom seemed cold in the slightest. Disappointment tugged at his chest. The doors closed and Sam was left with nothing he could do but go meet Bobby and break into a police station.

-o-o-o-

Cas made it six doors down the new hall before Dean caught up, curling his hand around the angel's bicep to pull him to a stop. It was a crazy relief when his hand didn't sink right through him, and Dean rejoiced for a second of feeling _real_ again. Castiel turned with a stoic look, as though he hadn't heard Dean call his name several times in his chase to catch up. For a moment, Dean struggled against that piercing gaze. It was easy to forget how ridiculously, over the top blue those eyes were when you hadn't seen them in a while.

"Hello, Dean."

The hunter was still trying to get his brain to function with his tongue beyond _"holy crap, it's really Cas,"_ when the familiar, gravel-gargled voice beat him to it. It was all Dean could do not to grin like an idiot. He totally failed and his face splint in an ear-to-ear smile. Man, the angel probably had no clue how good it was to hear that stupid, simple greeting that had become something of a catchphrase between them.

He pulled Cas into a tight hug, gripping the back of that damn trench coat with all that he had. It was rare for Winchester men to really hug. It usually took one of them almost dying. Or, more commonly, actually dying and coming back. The angel returned the gesture slowly, stiff arms coming up to wrap around Dean's back in an awkward pat that only made the hunter laugh.

Dean pulled away, keeping the angel at arm length, but still in contact. There was an irrational hunch in the back of his brain that said the guy might run again if he didn't keep a tight grip.

"Man, Cas, is it good to see you." The hunter did a quick once over of his friend, making sure he wasn't injured. The angel seemed fine – solid and whole as he ever was. Not a hint of an explosion in sight. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Dean's brow pinched in thought before he'd gotten the question fully out. He glanced around. The hallway wasn't a particularly busy one, but there was still the odd visitor or nurse passing through, none of which paid any attention to the two of them. "Are you…Are you a ghost, too? Can angels even be ghosts?"

"No. I'm a…" the angel paused, looking for the right word that the English language clearly didn't have, "…shadow. I'm not here, Dean. Not really. And it's almost time for me to go."

Blue eyes shifted down the hall, and Dean followed the gaze on instinct. There was nothing there, though Cas seemed to be intently staring at something. The hunter shook his head, confusion and fear weighing with one another. He had about a thousand questions, and no time for the angel's frequent disappearing acts.

He settled his hand on Cas's other arm, firmly locking him in place without realizing that's what he was doing. The angel turned back to him. "Go where? What the hell are you talking about, man?"

"To move on, of course."

Dean blinked at the straight up response. Then he blinked again, and pulled a bitchface that would have made Sam proud. " _What_?"

"It's my time, Dean."

"Like hell it is." The refusal wasn't just adamant, it was downright fact, as only a Winchester could say in the face of…what, death? Is that what Cas was talking about? Honestly, the hunter didn't even know. The angel certainly wasn't making much sense. "Look, we can deal with whatever…this is, after we stop Dad."

The angel tilted his head, brow finally pinching in some expression beyond that wide-eyed, vacant look he had once been famous for. "Your father?"

"Yeah, Cas," Dean answered, somewhat exasperated. But he reigned it in, taking a deep breath, counting to ten, and using the time to remind himself that maybe Cas was about as confused as he was. They needed to get a baseline going – get them both on the same page. The angel knew who Dean was, so it wasn't present-day-Cas. Which meant maybe the angel didn't realize he'd hitched a ride back with him to 2006.

Speaking of.

"Cas, do you know where you are?"

The angel tilted his head to the side. "McLaren Flint Hospital, fifth floor."

Dean blinked. Wait, they were in Flint? He hadn't actually bothered checking where they were – ironic, considering what he'd just asked the angel – because anything beyond the general 'hospital' conclusion he'd come to had seemed unnecessary at the time. Hospital was all he needed to know.

Flint wasn't that far from Saginaw, he reasoned. But Azazel had had them in the middle of nowhere. He was sure of it. Even concussed, Dean figured that cabin they were held in was north of Saginaw. It had been colder, for one. Not by much, but the hunter had plenty of experience picking up the subtleties of an unfamiliar environment. He'd figured they were closer to one of the lakes, given that crisp humidity in the air that always seemed present around bodies of water – miniscule ponds to vast oceanic expanses – and the way the cabin screamed eerie-haunted-lake-with-guaranteed-monster-legend nearby.

Of course, Michigan was riddled with a hell of a lot smaller lakes than the Great ones. They really could have been anywhere. He just figured north because it made the most sense, and it was where he would have carted off a prisoner for some loud, messy forms of questioning.

Not that being in a hospital in Flint meant he was wrong about where they were being held. Only that they'd been helicoptered to the nearest trauma center, rather than an ambulance ride away to a local hospital. Given his body was lying in a coma, more plaster than man at this point, he really shouldn't be surprised that they may have been air-lifted from wherever that truck had slammed into his Baby.

Suddenly he was glad to have been out cold for that bit. As Bruce Willis as an emergency helicopter flight would have been, Dean had enough issues with planes. He really didn't need to experience an even less recoverable form of flight.

The hunter focused back in on Cas, who was still staring at him with a little frown, unmoving beneath his grip. "No, I mean what year."

The brows on Jimmy Novak's face went up almost to his hairline in a moment of expressive emotion that Dean was far more used to from his best friend nowadays (or, uh, ten years in the future?) than that vacant stare that reminded him, creepily, of Naomi's control.

"The year?"

"Yeah, buddy, the year." Dean was trying to ignore the worry eating at his stomach now. He had thought, given that bomb in his chest that he didn't fully understand and Cas standing here now, visible to him but unseen by everyone else, that maybe the angel had caught a ride after all. Maybe Bobby had been right and not all of him had made it.

Dean couldn't fathom any other reason he would be seeing Cas, like a ghost, while he himself was a spirit and his body lay dying after the Yellow Eyed Demon had definitely mentioned angels and been blasted away from him in an explosion of light not unlike a smiting.

God, he had so many questions his head hurt.

The least of which was _are you possessing me/am I a vessel/why have you ignored me for six months/are you really here/what the hell Cas?_ Okay, that was more than one question, but they were all equally vying for attention that he'd rather just group them together and get one solid response for all of it. Because he was kind of drowning, and it only got worse every time he let himself think about that explosion or the warmth in his chest. A warmth that, for the last six months, he'd figured was the absence of friggin' Hell weighing on his soul. Now he was starting to think it might have been a chunk of his best friend lodged in his sternum the entire time.

Only angels didn't hitch rides in human chest cavities. Not without permission. And the world may have been ending, but he liked to think he'd remember something like that. Cas hadn't asked, and he hadn't given anything. Not that he wouldn't have. Maybe. Probably. If it meant bringing Cas with him to the past, then yes. Or saving his life. Yeah, okay, maybe he somehow had given him permission without saying it aloud.

Was that a thing? Could he have even done that?

A small flash of panic flared at the thought. Crap. He was a vessel. Was he a vessel? Shit. He didn't even know, nor did he know how to feel about it, either way. It had been a while since the Winchester boys had dealt with angels trying to get all up inside either of them, but the thought of ' _hell no_ ' and ' _that's bad'_ and _'over my dead body'_ were still pretty permanently ingrained in his being after that last year of the apocalypse. Not to mention the whole Gadreel incident and that last year with Lucifer back.

But it was Cas, so it couldn't be that bad, right?

Dean gave himself another mental shake. None of this mattered right now! Cas wasn't using him as a vessel. Yes, maybe the hunter would have let him ride around in _Taxi a la Dean_ if it was the only way he could have made the trip back, but he _hadn't_ and the angel _wasn't_. Dean had clearly been in charge of his own actions for the last six months, and it's not like he could be housing a halo without realizing it.

Except…this wasn't the first time an angel had gone subterfuge on the possession thing before. Sammy went months without knowing he was hosting a co-pilot. Distress flared throughout Dean's mind. Sam had been _pissed_ when he'd found out. And this wasn't the first time Castiel had played the game of staying out of Dean's life for Dean's sake.

Had Cas been with him the entire time and said nothing?

"It's 2006, Dean."

The hunter blinked as the angel brought him back to the present. Er…past. Whatever. Point was, the angel knew the year, but was clearly in no hurry to go stop John Winchester from selling his soul to save his son. Nor did he seem to even know that was a thing that was going to happen, and lead to much, much worse things in the long run.

 _What the hell is going on?_

Dean shook the question – all of the questions – off for the time being. It didn't matter; he could sort where the angel stood – where he and Cas stood together – after they saved his Dad.

"Look, I don't know what's going on with you," Dean started, giving his best friend a light shake through his tight grip on the angel's arms, "but I need you right now, buddy."

The angel seemed torn for a moment, eyes drifting back down the hallway to stare at nothing before he refocused his piercing gaze on Dean. That gaze that had never been able to deny Dean Winchester anything, and now was no exception. Slowly, he nodded. "I will help you."

Dean let out a breath and nodded in relief. He released the angel, taking a step back. "Great. Awesome. Okay."

The two then stood in the hallway as nurses passed by – sometimes through – them. Seconds ticked away as they stood in awkward silence, each waiting on the other. Finally, Cas shifted, uneasy, from one foot to the other.

"Where do we start?"

The hunter blew out another breath of air at the angel's question. Great. So Cas didn't have any ideas, either. "I have no friggin' clue. We gotta get Sam up to speed, but he's gone to meet with Bobby. So…until he gets back, we make sure Dad doesn't summon any demons, and we keep an eye out for Azazel."

"Demons?" The look Cas gave was shrewd and suspicious; it caught Dean by surprise. The angel stared up at him like _he_ was the one not making any sense.

The hunter regarded his friend with a frown. Okay, Cas's brain must have been more scrambled then he'd thought. Another thing to shove aside and deal with later. "Yeah. Dad's gonna summon him and make a deal to save me. We have to stop him."

Intense blue eyes regarded him severely, and Dean kept right on frowning. "If you stop him from saving you…you'll die."

Yeah, okay, there was that. Honestly, Dean hadn't gotten that far. Dying was second to stopping Dad from sacrificing himself. He'd figure out what to do about his own not-dying problem after they'd solved John's.

"We'll figure it out, alright?" Dean offered his friend a weak smile. "We always do, don't we?"

Cas tilted his head to the side, and the hunter found the familiar gesture comforting, if not amusing. The angel held his arm out in an 'after you' gesture, and Dean took a deep breath, then plowed on ahead, down the hospital hallway, back towards his father's room.

They were on Winchester Guard Duty until Sam got back. And in the meantime, Cas could probably teach him how to move stuff in ghost-form.


	35. Season 2: Chapter 2

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns:** __Oh. My. Chuck. Guys, I can't even. I'm like...type-stuttering. The amount of crazy support for last chapter was (not to be redundant, but) crazy. The excitement that this story was back, the joy of Cas's first appearance, the suspicions at his weirdness, and the many guesses as to what would come next had me fighting tooth and nail against posting this chapter every day last week. Every day! I wanted to hand it over to you all so badly. You beautiful, beautiful people. So thank you, truly, from the very bottom of my Muse's heart :)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** We continue with the dramatic angst and the heartstring pulling. Dean's (re)learning lessons on being a ghost, John's dodging the results of ghost-lessons, and Sam's just about running all over the place._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 2

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"It's not going to move if you just keep punching it."

Dean huffed out a frustrated breath, straightening up from his last attempt at taking on the empty coffee cup. His opponent just sat there on his dad's bedside table, mocking him in all its papery not-moved-ness.

The hunter threw an arm out at the thing in frustration, and it sunk right through. He whipped his head around at the angel with a glare, daring him to say anything more. Cas was sitting on his dad's bed, heedless of the man's legs going straight through his incorporeal butt and thighs. The angel looked bored, of all things, as he stared at the hunter, unimpressed.

John Winchester was oblivious to their presence. He was reading through a mindless magazine a nurse had left him after he'd flirted his way into getting his cell phone and clothes back. He'd really had to work it, too, since the items were in police custody. Dean stopped watching the sickeningly sappy scene rather quickly, growing increasingly uncomfortable and feeling like a right down voyeur. It was particularly off-putting as it was his father doing the flirting.

John was a widower; he wasn't dead (yet) (S _hut up, Inner Dean_ ). Dean knew that, as a man, he had needs. He'd always been discrete around his kids though, particularly sensitive to the fact that he had two young boys who lost their mother very early. Maybe he'd been a little _too_ discrete, given he had a third child that neither Sam nor Dean had ever suspected existed, let alone heard about.

Dean wondered if he should reach out to Adam earlier this time, or try to keep him out of the whole mess entirely. He really didn't have a clue which one would result in the bigger catastrophe, but, given how things had turned out so far, one of them certainly would. Still, he'd make sure when those ghouls rolled around that either the Milligans weren't in town or the Winchesters were.

Secret siblings aside, the nurse had come back, pep in her step, fifteen minutes later with his phone, clothes, car keys, and a magazine tucked right on top. _Men's Health_ of all things. Dean had snorted so hard he was sure his dad heard it.

But back to the damn coffee cup.

"By all means, show me how it's done then!" The hunter took a step back, haughty words hanging in the air between the human and angel. Dean turned his back on the innocent paper cup and regarded his friend with a challenge in his eyes.

Castiel raised a single brow, but the spark in his own blue gaze suggested Dean's tactic to get the angel to just do the work for him had been spotted easily. Cas shook his head. If Dean didn't know any better, he'd say the bastard was amused. "You're trying to attack it physically, but you don't have a body."

Dean huffed again, but continued to stare at the angel, ignoring his lesson just like Cas had ignored his challenge. "You telling me you can't move one tiny little cup?"

The angel's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Dean knew he won, and the next second Cas flicked his hand and the paper cup tumbled off the small table. It landed on the floor, rolling in a lazy, slanted circle due to the lid before eventually settling on one side.

John Winchester's head snapped to follow the movement and silence reigned in the room.

"Hell yeah!" Dean cried out, raising his arms in a mock 'field goal' cry. He turned back to the angel, ignoring the hunter in the bed regarding the room with tense suspicion now. "Why do I even need to learn this; you can just catch Sammy's attention for me!"

Cas did not seem to share in his friend's victory or amusement.

"Dean?" John's voice was tight, sharp eyes casting about the room slowly. His hand twitched atop the blankets, itching for a weapon of any sort. No hunter was stupid enough to blindly assume a ghost – or any supernatural creature making objects fly about a room – was a friendly, even if they could put two and two together and assume it was their own kin.

Dean glanced at his father, then back to Castiel. The angel stared at him with blatant expectation, glancing between the elder and younger Winchester with a pointed look.

The hunter sagged, casting his friend an annoyed glare of his own before he cast about for something else in the room he could try and move. He zoned in on the magazine in his father's lap, still held loosely but mostly resting against his thighs. Dean narrowed his eyes on a single, glossy page. His brow furled in concentration, jaw clenched and pulse point in his temple flaring.

The corner fluttered, but nothing else happened.

John relaxed slightly, a little bit of the tension in his form fading out as nothing else in the room moved.

"Argh!" Dean turned away from the magazine in frustration. He couldn't even move a friggin' flimsy piece of paper. Cas was back to looking amused.

"I told you. You're attacking it physically."

"Well how the hell else am I supposed to hit it!" The hunter gave up, settling in the plastic visitor's chair his brother had occupied earlier that afternoon.

"You don't have fists to hit things with. You're a spirit, Dean. You're nothing but a soul right now." Castiel turned his gaze to the older hunter, and he reached out his hand. With palm up, he slowly turned his hand over, and the top page of the magazine lifted and turned.

John stiffened once more, staring down at the paper as it flipped again and again. He breathed out his son's name shakily.

The angel turned back to Dean. "You're not a being, you're an essence. Your power is not in force, but in presence."

"Alright, Gandhi," the man from the future groused, crossing his arms. "Give it to me again, in layman's terms."

The angel huffed a little sigh of his own, but the look he bestowed on the frustrated human was almost fond. "Think, don't act."

Dean frowned. That was hardly any better. But he remembered the ghost kid, Cole, telling him to get angry, right before he'd goaded him and his brother into a twelve-year-old fight club (which had been, he could now admit, downright hilarious). He turned back to the magazine. John was alternating between it, the coffee cup, and the rest of the room, clearly indecisive about how to proceed when the possible hunt staring him in the face was his own son.

His own son who was doing a terrible job at getting a message across. Not that that's what Dean was doing – this was just practice. But if Dean had been the one sitting in a hospital bed with a dying Sammy next door and crap flying through the room, he'd be expecting a friggin' translatable message, damn it.

So he tried not to act. He tried not to move his body at all in response to the very physical action he was trying to perpetrate. Instead, he focused on the single page he was trying to turn, and kept at it until he was able to picture it moving up and folding over again and again and again.

The page fluttered, struggled, and then flipped over.

His back straightened, delighted shock clear on his face as he looked back at Cas. The angel chuckled at his success and mockingly clapped his hands slowly at his friend's achievement. Dean could even ignore the uncharacteristic sarcasm in the move, since John had finally made up his mind as to what to do next. In a flurry of movement, he reached for the phone sitting atop his pile of clothes on the table beside him. It was dialing and pressed to his ear in seconds.

"Sammy?" John sounded almost desperate, slightly watery eyes still staring down at the open magazine. If anyone else walked in, it would be damn near laughable to see the staunch, hard-ass marine almost in tears over a full spread of Usher discussing his fitness and nutrition secrets. Dean was feeling pretty damn giddy himself. "I need you to pick up one more thing for me."

-o-o-o-

Sam raced back to the hospital in his dad's pickup in the early hours of the morning. The cops had turned the vehicle over to him shortly after he'd been cleared by hospital staff earlier that day. The young man had given his report about the cabin and the 'kidnapping' only an hour after the chopper had landed on the roof of McLaren Flint trauma center. Sam walked away without even getting checked in, cleared with only minor injuries from the crash. The eighteen wheeler had hit the passenger side of the car, damaging his dad a lot more than him, and he hadn't been injured beforehand or unbuckled in the backseat like his brother.

Local law enforcement found the cabin almost immediately after he'd given them a rundown of events. It wasn't hard to backtrack the road they'd been on to the abandoned building once they knew to look for it. They'd found additional bodies – two young girls and a boy – out in the wood shed. Both girls had bled to death, and the young man's neck had been broken. Given what the police had told him, the bastard had killed those kids while Dean and Sam were less than a hundred feet away, tied up and bleeding to death in the cabin.

Sam tried not to let guilt eat away at him over the fact that Yellow Eyes had added more bodies to the death count in his pursuit of them, but his fingers ached around the steering wheel just thinking about it. God, that blood had probably been one of the girl's. Why else would a demon bleed a human to death? All Yellow Eyes would have had to do was possess one of the girls as he'd bled her dry, all to force it down Sam's throat in the end.

His trip back to the hospital, hurried as it was, was interrupted for the three and a half minutes it took the boy to pull off the road and empty his stomach into the bushes.

Although the cabin wasn't cleared yet, the cops hadn't found much reason to consider any of the Winchesters involved negatively. They were clearly victims, and with the testimony of the truck driver – who the cops concluded was, at best, drugged – they were pretty much scott-free. The biggest thing they'd have to do was clear the guns, and John and Dean both had licenses to carry and registration for their respective firearms. At worst, they might be slapped with a permit fine for the Colt, but Sam knew his dad could talk his way out of that easy.

Which made breaking into the Denton Police Department to retrieve the gun even more frustrating. The little township where they had been held – Backus, Michigan – was pretty shaken up over the horrific scene. The nearest police force, one town over in Denton, didn't see torture and triple body counts all that often (or likely ever). Except for a lack of suspect in custody, the case was open and shut in terms of the three survivors lucky to alive. If his dad could just wait another twenty-four hours, they'd get everything back from the cops, no further questions asked, and Sam wouldn't have had to break into an evidence locker in the middle of the night.

But John had a fair point about Yellow Eyes grabbing it before the police released it. Given that Sam had forced the demon's hand twice now with that gun, he was somewhat surprised it was still in the evidence box once he got into the storage locker.

Sam parked the truck hastily at the hospital, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and shoved the evidence box with Dean's .45 and clothes under the passenger seat. It wouldn't be long before the police realized it was missing, and he needed to be sure they didn't suspect him or his family of taking it. He tucked the Colt into the bag of supplies Bobby had given him – anger sparking at what the gruff hunter had told him those ingredients were really for – and grabbed the last item his dad has asked for.

Tucking the large Ouija board box under his arm as inconspicuously as possible, he shouldered the small duffle and headed into the hospital, hopefully to talk to his brother. After he had words with his father.

-o-o-o-

When Sam entered the room at the start of visiting hours, laden with a duffle and a thin board game box, Dean stood from his father's bed, having pretty much spent the night camped out atop it alongside Castiel like they were sixth graders at a freaking summer camp sleepover. They hadn't quite gotten to braiding each other's hair yet, but boredom had driven Dean pretty damn close.

"Sammy, tell me you brought the Ouija board!" he called loudly in greeting. Sam crossed right in front of him and set the duffle bag on the bed where his brother had been seconds ago. He didn't say anything, placing a large, thin box beside it. Dean let out a whoop at the bold, white text and picture of a wooden board with a swirly set of letters. "Atta boy! Come on, let's crack this thing open and get talking."

Castiel slid off the bed, tilting his head to the same angle as the Ouija box, observing the photo across its front.

"You're quiet." John hadn't said anything when his youngest came in, but the silence combined with the tension in his son's tight shoulders were setting off alarm bells.

"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" Sam couldn't quite look at his father, worried he'd lose the calm he was barely holding onto; a calm that was maintained only by the possibility that his brother was around, waiting on them. Counting on them.

"What are you talking about?"

"The stuff, Dad." Sammy gestured emphatically to the duffel bag resting on John's legs, finally locking eyes on his father and unable to hold back the anger there. "You don't use it to ward off a demon; you use it to _summon_ one."

Both Dean's and Cas's eyes drifted to the zipped up bag and Dean sucked in a slow breath, trying to keep his pulse even. Okay, so Dad had the means to summon Azazel. Didn't mean anything. They could still stop it. He just had to tell Sam what was happening and his kid brother would take care of it. Easy-Peasy.

"Come on, Sam. Don't do this right now. Just pick up the board and _talk_ to me."

John went quiet, not quite able to meet his son's accusatory stare either, but Sam wasn't done. "You're planning on bringing the demon here, aren't you? Having some stupid, macho showdown!"

"No, he isn't, Sammy!" Dean stood in front of his brother, completely unseen, and begged the younger man to hear him. "Don't do this right now, man. You gotta talk to me! We can stop it."

"I have a plan, Sam."

John's words sent a spike of ice through Dean's chest and he clenched his fists against his sides.

"That's exactly my point! Dean is dying, and _you_ have a plan!"

Dean tucked his chin against his chest as he struggled to control the panic flaring through his body. They didn't have time for this, and the more Sam argued with their dad, the more surely he drove the final nail into John's coffin.

Not that this was Sam's fault, nor had it been the first time. John was a stubborn bastard, and he had always intended to throw himself on that yellow-eyed grenade. But right now they had a chance to stop it, and that chance revolved entirely around Sam dropping this argument and picking up that Ouija board.

"Sammy, please. _Please_."

The youngest Winchester tossed his head in disbelief, anger breaking down into disappointment. "You know what? You care more about killing this demon than you do saving your own son!"

"Stop it _."_

"Do not tell me how I feel!" John bellowed back, grip on the bedcovers tightening. "I'm doing this for Dean!"

"I said STOP IT!" Dean slammed his hands down on the small, attached bed table. The whole bed shook with John on it, and the table and its contents rattled dangerously, metal protesting the abuse. An empty cup of Jell-O jittered right off the side, falling harmlessly onto the hospital blankets. The living hunters in the room froze as the metal arm sung out the last of the vibrations before settling into silence.

Dean stared in surprise at the table, drawing his fists off the pseudo-wooden surface. He glanced at Cas, who stood at the foot of the bed with something between surprise and approval in his blue eyes.

"You see that?" Dean asked with a weak chuckle. "I full on Swayze'd that mother."

Sam and John stared at the table, then each other, both knowing exactly who else was in the room with them. Sam's hand shook slightly as it reached out for the Ouija board. He stared down at the thing hopefully before glancing around the empty space.

John cleared his throat. He seemed both embarrassed and exhausted, and Sam fought back the twinge of guilt at seeing his dad so worn down.

"You, uh… You go see if you can get anything off that. They wanna do another round of X-rays on me in a minute anyway." He lifted a shoulder, indicating his busted arm with a half shrug. "Doc wants to make sure there's no nerve damage."

Sam's shoulders fell a bit but he nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. If Dean's really around I'll…uh, I'll get us all on the same page. Maybe he'll have some ideas or something. A hoodoo priest to lay some mojo on him." He let out a weak chuckle. "Or another faith healer."

"That was one in a million, Sammy," his father returned, not unkindly. The words might have been crushing, but the regret in his expression softened them. "We may not find another."

Sam sniffed, refusing to look up from the board in his hands. "I know. But I'm not gonna stop looking."

"Me either, son. We'll turn over every stone. I'm not giving up on him." His youngest nodded and headed for the door, likely back upstairs to Dean's room in the ICU. "And Sam? I promise. I won't hunt the demon until we know Dean's okay."

Sam nodded, trying for a smile but it felt weak. He left the room, leaving behind the unseen ghost of his older brother to stare, cautiously, at their father. Did he mean it? Was John going to wait, give Sam time to find another way – give _Dean_ time to get back in his body himself – or was he just saying it to keep his youngest at bay? Again, Dean wished he could remember how this went down last time. Had they had this exact conversation before John Winchester sold his soul?

Not that it mattered either way; he _had_ to speak with his brother. That was the first step. Since his dad had more appointments with the doctors, Dean couldn't do that _and_ keep an eye on John Winchester. So he started for the door. Sam would be in his room trying to talk to him, and he didn't want to see how long his brother would hold out before deciding the Ouija board was a stupid idea.

Still, Dean hesitated again at the threshold to the hallway, turning to look back at his father once more. John sank into the pillows, closing his eyes with a deep, world-weary sigh he _never_ would have allowed his sons to hear.

"Cas?" Dean turned his gaze to the angel, who was still standing at the foot of the bed, staring at John Winchester with a curious expression. Blue eyes met his. "We gotta go."

The angel nodded and crossed the room, passing him in the doorway to follow Sam up the couple of floors. Dean paused again, eyes lingering on his dad, who didn't look like he was planning on getting up or sneaking away anytime soon. He looked more likely to take a nap than summon a demon.

"Just wait, okay? Please, Dad. I'll figure something out and come back on my own. Just give me time." It was a whispered plea he knew his father couldn't hear, but maybe someone else – something else – would. Dean turned and headed back to his comatose body, trailing just behind Cas.

-o-o-o-

When they got to his room, Sam was talking quietly with a doctor who must have been in for a checkup when the younger Winchester arrived. The conversation was quiet in that nothing-good-is-being-said sort of way, and Dean didn't bother listening. He was dying, no hope, all they could do, yada yada yada. Instead, he settled cross-legged on the floor, waiting for his brother to inevitably shake off the doctor and join him.

God, why hadn't he just told Sam everything days ago? Then they wouldn't be in this mess, with the only one who knew anything lying useless in a coma, and their main form of communication a friggin hoodoo board set that was as likely to end them in a horror movie as it was to actually convey anything useful.

"Why do you think your father is going to make a deal to save your life?"

Dean looked up to the angel who had settled, rather relaxed, against the edge of the bed. It was weird to see his friend so…not-stiff. Even after years spent on Earth, Castiel carried himself like he didn't feel comfortable in his own body. Which, considering it didn't start out his, Dean had always written off as normal Cas.

The hunter wondered if being nothing but a shadow of what he was – like a memory somehow housed in his chest – had finally freed Cas of that physical limitation. Huh. Maybe Chrysler-Building-Tall, Real-Cas was, of all things, laid back in his true form.

Dean almost snorted at the thought of Castiel, Warrior of God and Savior of the Righteous Man, ever being anything close to _laid back_.

"Because he did it last time," the man from the future answered, eyes drifting over to his brother. He tapped his fingers impatiently on the tile floor.

"Last time?"

Dean focused back on the angel, a light frown pulling at his forehead as his friend continued to be sporadically confused and cynical. Cas definitely didn't remember the time jump, but what he did remember was inconsistent and the muddy mix of memory issues and skepticism was a foreign sight on the usually tolerant angel. Unfortunately, unpredictability was really inconvenient right now, and just about the last thing Dean needed in addition to kind of dying, being incorporeal, and having no way – at least no quick way – to warn his brother or stop what was coming.

He didn't exactly have time to address any of it accept the last one, though, so Dean shoved the rest aside for now. They could dig into it later. As long as Cas didn't start acting like Lucifer-Possessed-Cas had acted, Dean would forgive him some changes until they had time to talk about this whole shadow-memory-chest-taxi-bomb thing.

"Yeah, Cas. The last time this happened." Dean gestured to the hospital room around him. "Which is why we need to stop it."

The angel was silent for a moment more, eyes drifting to the far wall and down to the floor in deep thought. When he spoke, his gravelly voice was soft, but leading. "You're ready for death, then?"

Annoyance flared at the question and Dean snorted. The look his friend sent him was a serious one, and he remembered the terrible expression in those blue eyes when Cas said it was his time to move on. The acceptance and lack of fight. Like they were talking about the weather. The hunter swallowed forcefully, suddenly realizing that Castiel wasn't joking here. He glanced at the floor, picking at the hem of his blue scrubs as he considered the question.

"Am I ready to die?" he echoed, actually giving the question his attention. If he stopped his dad's deal, he might not make it back. Honestly, he hadn't gotten that far. Current planning extended to 'save Dad' and no further.

Dean supposed he was okay with it. He probably had been for a while. Honestly, he was tired; he'd been tired for years. And while that didn't qualify him for calling it quits in his book, he supposed he'd been ready for his time to be up for a while now. If nothing saved him or stopped him, that is. If the cosmos finally decided it was time for Dean Winchester to rest.

"You mean if it sticks?" he asked sarcastically in Cas's direction. The angel didn't seem to get the joke, or wasn't laughing about it. Dean sobered, trying not to be annoyed by his friend's increasingly depressing behavior, and gave a sharp nod. "Yeah. I'm ready."

Not that he thought it would actually happen, of course. Heaven and Hell couldn't afford for him to die right now without a deal stamped on his soul to send him straight to Hell. But sure, in theory, if God or Fate or any of that other destiny crap he utterly didn't believe in came down and decided it was his time, then yeah, sure. He could deal. He could let go.

Castiel didn't say anything, and his expression was closer to that stoic angel Dean met eight years ago. He wasn't sure if it was disappointment he saw in those eyes, but the hunter couldn't imagine anything else from his admission. Not his steadfast, loyal angel, anyway. Cas never gave up on anything, Dean worst of all.

He looked away. The guilt that had been conspicuously absent as he considered the decision, having been replaced with an exhausted sort of calm he so rarely felt and usually associated with failure, was suddenly present in full. Dean thought about what his death would mean in this timeline, in this moment. Leaving Sam alone to face the Apocalypse. Leaving his Dad to feel like he should have made that deal. Bobby to think he should have been there.

All those people he wouldn't be there to save or help or meet going forward. Charlie, Jo and Ellen, Claire and Alex and Jody. He briefly wondered what would happen to Castiel: the Cas that existed in this timeline and not the one standing in front of him now. Would the angel ever leave Heaven? He certainly wouldn't rebel without Dean pushing him to give up everything he knew for what was _right_.

Maybe that was better, he thought bitterly, for only a moment before sweeping the thought aside. He was dramatic and childish for thinking it; Cas had professed several times that he did not regret his decision, nor his friendship with the brothers. Only the choices that had come after.

"If I go down," he suddenly spoke to the room, staring at the wall and not his best friend, "do I take you with me?"

Dean couldn't stop himself from glancing at Castiel, suddenly terrified of the answer. He shouldn't be, he thought. It was not like either of them were afraid of Death. They were all old friends at this point.

Still, facing death and being the cause of it in another were two very different things.

The angel's piercing gaze stared at him for some time, and then slid, slowly, just over his shoulder. Dean resisted the urge to glance behind him. There was nothing there (there never was with Cas). Blue eyes slid back.

"I'm not really here, Dean."

"Right. Shadow," he answered automatically, offering a bitter smile. He swallowed thickly and looked away again.

Silence reigned for another moment, Sam and the doctor still talking. Dean wanted to roll his eyes, but didn't bother. He'd stood in his brother's shoes a month ago in Wyoming and he'd hounded the doctors then too, trying to find an angle – any angle – to save his brother, no matter how slim the chances were.

"You may not be all here right now," Dean said out loud again, not quite looking at the only one in the room who could hear him, "but I'm glad you're _here_."

It was quiet, but serious. His cheeks may have flushed because, come on, teenage girl moment much? Of course, the last time he'd seen the angel, Cas had been confessing his need to be useful, so Dean didn't give himself too much crap for admitting it out loud. It was nice – desperately needed, actually – not to be alone in this, and Cas deserved to hear it.

The angel watched the hunter carefully, indecision beginning to show in the cracks of his stoic mask. Eventually, he turned to look at Sam, wrapping up his useless discussion with the doctor. Cas ducked his head for a moment, took a deep, resolute breath, and turned back to Dean.

"It's strange," he started, impassiveness back in place and at odds with the clearly forced flatness of his voice. Like he was trying to be pre-Apocalypse Cas and failing pretty terribly at it. Dean cast him an odd look, but the angel ignored it and, honestly, the hunter was starting to settle more on annoyance than worry over this mish-mashed version of his friend. "Your father didn't have any appointments scheduled for this afternoon. At least, not on his chart."

The annoyance died like a candle flame in a friggin' hurricane, and Dean sat straight up on the floor with a breathless, "What?"

Cas just regarded him with that pointed look.

Panic struck the human, sending every nerve into a fit of _shit shit shit!_ His dad had lied. His dad had lied, and they'd lefthim alone with a bag full of stuff to summon a demon. How stupid could they possibly be?

 _Son of a bitch!_

Without thinking, Dean pulled his knee to his chest and struck his leg out as hard as he could against the bedframe. His bare foot connected with a solid hit. Only, the thing didn't just rattle like Dean expected, hoping to get his brother's attention _right fucking now_. It screeched and jutted six and a half feet across the room, careening at an angle and taking the mattress, his body, EKG machine, and IV stand with it.

Okay, overkill maybe, but it did the damn trick as the two living humans in the room went dead silent and stared incredulously at the bed and its solo occupant. The IV line was still swinging back and forth with an obnoxious squeak.

It also did the trick of sending a shearing pain through his chest, straight to his heart. Dean gasped out, falling back on one arm, the other grabbing across his tight, cramping torso. Cold flooded him and he suddenly couldn't breathe. He watched in terror as his legs, torso, hands, all flickered out of existence and back again. Then the multiple machines in the room started screaming.

-o-o-o-

"Look, I know it isn't easy to hear," the doctor was saying, "but your brother _is_ fighting. You just have to have faith in whatever comes next."

Sam nodded, trying to accept what was supposed to be reassuring words, but mostly failing. Platitudes, and nothing more. He'd heard them before, from doctors on cases concerning injured civilians. From cops on hunts where they hadn't made it on time, or someone had been caught in the crossfire. Empty words meant to bring some sort of closure, but were ultimately meaningless in the end.

The young Winchester wasn't ready for closure anyhow.

"Thanks, Doctor," he said with a nod, trying to get the man out of the room now that he'd once more exhausted every possible scenario where the medical world got his brother out of this. Sam had already known it wouldn't happen; he was going to have to turn to the supernatural remedy if he wanted to save Dean.

"I'm not just saying it, you now." The doctor was a middle-aged man of Indian descent with kind brown eyes and a smile that suggested a halfway decent sense of humor when he wasn't breaking terrible news to people. Sam had to remind himself not to take out his frustration – or impatience – on the man just doing his job, and a decent one at that. "A patient in a coma with his injuries and those stats? I would have called it the minute he came in."

He turned back to Sam, a sympathetic but not entirely unhopeful turn to his lips. "He's held on way longer than I – or any of us – thought he would. Something's keeping him here, so have faith and give it some time."

Sam stared at his brother, eyes tracing down to his gauze-wrapped chest and the burn marks from an inhuman blast he knew lay just underneath. The kid swallowed heavily but nodded to the doctor with a weak smile.

"I'll check back in before my shift ends. I'm not promising anything. His odds are still not good. But the fact that he's fighting…"

"I get it," Sammy mumbled with a nod. "Thanks. For everything."

The doctor hesitated for a moment more, then nodded and patted Sam on the shoulder. The hunter consciously slid the Ouija board deeper under his arm. Boy, had the man given him one hell of a pitying look when he'd seen it. The doc moved to pass him and exit the room when a stilted screech of metal on linoleum ruptured the air and fast, brutal movement drew both their attentions to the center of the room.

The hospital bed his brother was lying on flew towards the far wall, scraping across the floor a good half dozen feet. Machines tumbled to the side in its wake. Tubes pulled tight. Dean's body settled from the jerk with a light rock and Sam could only stand there, blinking.

"What in God's name-"

He turned to the doctor, who was staring at the scene with wide, disbelieving brown eyes. Sam tried for a light laugh, grabbing the man's arm and hauling him towards the door, excuses flying from his mouth about how he'd really just like some time alone with his brother, maybe say goodbye or try that faith thing. Grieving process, you know.

The doc was stuttering out half-formed responses, hand catching himself on the doorframe into the hallway, sort of arguing against the man – but also not really because what the hell had just happened – when his patient's heart monitor started beeping dangerously fast. All confusion and disbelief (and any shot Sam had at getting him out of that room) vanished, replaced by a terrifying level of professionalism. The man pushed past the hunter, coat flapping as he rounded the bed, pressing buttons across the multitude of machines now cramped in the corner by the angle of the bedframe.

"He's going to crash." The doctor turned towards Sam. Before the young man could ask him what the hell he meant, he yelled d at the top of his lungs, "CODE BLUE!"

The sounds of people scattering in the hall signaled that nurses at the station a dozen feet away heard the cry and were already on the move. The doctor began chest compressions on Dean's unmoving body just as alarms started blaring from his brother's bed. It was at least a dozen terribly long seconds before three nurses and another doctor rushed into the room, hauling a defibrillator machine behind them. They pushed Sam out of the way, and the young hunter huddled along the side of the doorway as the medical team surrounded his brother and prepped the AED.

One of the nurses silenced the heart monitor, killing the shrill alarm that had been crying out ever since Dean's EKG flatlined. A second nurse handed over the paddles to another doctor, and the attending physician pulled back, ending the chest compressions. One of the nurses yelled 'Clear!', and Sam bit back a sob and the water gathering in his eyes as his brother's body jolted with the electricity they sent straight to his heart.

"No," he barely whispered, fingers gripping the edges of the Ouija board hard enough to put nail marks in the cardboard.

The doctors hit his brother again. Sam released one hand from the box, transferring his death grip to the doorframe because his legs were not going to keep him upright much longer. They hit him a third time, and beeps started up again, intermittently, from the machines. The room bled tension out like a system flush. Nurses quieted, Dean's lead doctor called adjustments in fluids and medication as they got him stable once more, and the room settled.

Sam turned and fled.

-o-o-o-

Dean lay gasping on the floor, staring up at the ceiling as his chest heaved up and down with the sudden flood of not being in pain. That _Sucked_. Capital 'S'. It was crippling, even. Cold gripped at his chest like an ice claw of absolute terror and nothingness. Worse yet was the fear that came with it, because he'd only felt that specific, freezing, gripping pain before in the times he had died.

The hellhounds, the doc who'd put him to sleep so he could chat with Death, Metatron, even that shotgun to the chest before he'd wound up in Heaven. They had each come with pain of their own, but the unifying quality between all of them had been that gripping cold that came just before the end.

Every time the docs hit his body with a jolt, he'd felt the electricity arc through him. Like a tuning fork bringing him back in sync with his body, he'd felt each zap spring across his chest as if he were once more corporeal. The connection allowed all the other aches and pains of a broken body to come through too, though at least those were blissfully numbed by a cocktail of morphine and god knows what else. He didn't know if he could have handled the full thing in addition to that death grip around his chest.

Movement at the door caught his attention, and Dean sat upright in time to see his brother tear out of the room like a bat out of hell.

"Sam!" He knew the man couldn't hear him, but he called after his distraught younger brother all the same. Damn it. The poor kid had just watched him flatline and the docs fight to bring him back. Dean struggled to his feet, but his ghost body, or whatever it was, felt as weak as a kitten.

Cas extended a hand in front of him. Dean glanced up at the angel, almost having forgotten he was in the room. Castiel regarded him with a pitying look where Dean expected to see concern and that wide-eyed fear the angel never was capable of hiding in the face of one of the Winchester brothers' pain.

Oh, right. This Cas was ready to throw in the towel and thought Dean wasn't far behind in options. Just another thing on the long list of shit to deal with.

Dean grabbed his friend's hand and hauled himself up. The angel followed after him as he tore out of the room in search for Sam. His brother hadn't gotten far; the kid was collapsed against the hallway wall a couple feet down from Dean's door. He'd ended up back against the supportive surface, long cricket legs drawn up to his chest, Ouija box across them and forehead pressed to the cardboard as he fought, valiantly, not to have a complete breakdown in public.

He was mostly losing.

Dean crouched in front of him, an ache settling deep in his chest at the sight of his brother this way. He curled his fingers around Sam's tightly fisted hand, even if they went right through. "It's okay, Sammy. I'm right here. I'm okay."

"Dean." Castiel's voice was soft, but held none of the comfort he desperately needed from his best friend right then. "It's time."

Anger flashed through every non-existent fiber of his incorporeal body. But he refused to leave his brother's side just to take it out on the angel who, frankly, could have picked a better time for this little mid-life crisis. He gritted his teeth and counted to ten, then counted to ten again, as he focused solely on his little brother who he couldn't help right now either.

"Dean."

"No," he finally snapped, channeling more anger in the angel's direction than Castiel probably deserved, for lack of a better target elsewise. "Damn it, Cas. Help me! We still have time; we can still stop dad. We just have to get Sam talking to us."

The angel's eyes dragged to the side, back to the hospital room he stood in front of, where doctors were still settling their patient. Dean's body lay unmoving, tubes repositioned and fluids checked, though every human in that room knew it was only postponing the inevitable. Cas turned back to the spirit that body belonged to.

"It's not your fight anymore."

Feet away, hand still wrapped around his brother's, Dean frowned sharply. He almost couldn't believe the words coming out of his best friend's mouth. What the hell was going on with him? Dean had never seen him just give up like this before.

"How can you say that, Cas? _You?_ "

The angel only held out his hand, ignoring his words. "Come with me, Dean."

Slowly, the hunter stood, releasing his brother's hand though he towered over him protectively, even if the kid couldn't see or sense him. As he stared at his angel, disbelief began to fight on an even playing field with the anger that had so easily overwhelmed his intelligence and his gut. The cogs in his brain started turning.

"You know," he began almost conversationally, belied only by the tight fists at his side, "I've seen a lot as a hunter. Lifetime's worth of things most people can't even imagine. But you know what I've never seen, in all that time? I've never seen you throw in the towel, Cas."

Castiel's expression didn't change. He regarded the hunter with the same pity and resolve, hand held out to him. Dean's green eyes hardened and darkened into something dangerous as his suspicion cemented into certainty.

"Not even in the face of _Lucifer_ , man. You didn't give up. Not like this."

"We're both on borrowed time already," the angel supplied with a slight one-shouldered shrug. Like it didn't matter. Cas was many, many things, but uncaring was not one of them.

"Maybe." Dean shook his head, regarding the creature standing in front of with the same lethal expression he gave anything that threatened his family. "But you and me are real good at screwing with time. You'd know that, if you were the real Castiel."

Silence hung heavy in the hallway as the sharp words rang between them like a physical thing.

The image of his best friend frowned, staring at him with something between disappointment and resignation. Then Cas was shifting. The lights overhead flickered as his dark, wind-blown hair grew out around his face, framing the softening jawline with a cut that was straight and short and severe. The trench coat and suit melted away to reveal jeans and a black top fitting a slim, petite, and definitely female body. Those piercing blue eyes shifted color, lightening like sea-foam on a stormy day at the beach. That gaze was just as cold and unmoving and sad as he remembered.

"Tessa."


	36. Season 2: Chapter 3

_**Summary**_ _: Cas pulled his broken body over the grass-covered graves beneath them. The buried dead that he and Sam would soon be among. But Dean was alive and only a few feet away. Only a few feet and he could fix this. He would fix it. There was still time: time to send him back, time to make the other choice, time to choose a different road. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **Chapter Warnings:** How can so much plot happen when people are so busy chatting? They run and talk, that's how. The boys are experts at it. But first, they gotta warm up by… not running. Actually, they're kinda sitting around a lot…. How was there plot in this again?_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 3

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Tessa."

"That's one of my names," the reaper responded, crossing her arms lightly over her black top, staring at him with that ever-unimpressed gaze. He should have seen it earlier in Cas's blue eyes. "I'm curious how you know it, though."

"Oh, we've met," Dean responded with a near-predatory grin. "We go way back, you and me."

She laughed lightly – a sardonic chuckle more than anything else – and stared at him with no small amount of skepticism that looked far more right on her cold features than it had on Cas. "I think I'd remember someone like you."

"Trust me, you will." His grin grew in size and danger, and he could tell the reaper was already rethinking her approach. Which, yeah, she definitely should. He was _not_ the man she'd come here to reap; he was something a hell of a lot older and smarter and more deadly than that kid. "For the record, digging in my brain to come up with that little Cas impersonation? Not cool, Tess."

"I wasn't trying to hurt you. And I didn't read your mind, Dean." She walked towards him and her voice was back to the calm, gentle demeanor she seemed to default to. The mother figure to a wounded animal voice. He remembered it with Cole, and it had worked a hell of a lot better on that kid then it would on him. "Just your soul, and it told me his form would be the most comforting to you, to ease you in the transition."

He snorted and shook his head at the excuse. Strike two; she had one shot left. "Yeah, well, it told you wrong. And I'm not easing into anything."

"I've noticed." One thin, manicured eyebrow rose with that touch of sass he was more familiar with when it came to this particular reaper. At least when she wasn't on the job trying to convince him (or anyone else) to roll over and die. Her pale green eyes slid just over his shoulder for a moment, then focused back on him, demeanor softening. The hand she put on his arm was gentle and sympathetic and oh, yeah, she was definitely heading straight for strike three. "Death is nothing to fear, Dean."

"Maybe not _now_ ," he answered easily, one shoulder raising in a half a shrug, "maybe not for _me_. But it's sure as hell something to fear when you've sold your soul to hell, like my _dad_ is about to!"

That tripped her up, and Tessa paused. Her hand slid off his arm and she stared up at him like she was trying to guess whether or not he was lying. He got it. Really, he did. Demon deals were rare in this timeline. They wouldn't be picking up for another year or two, not until the Hell Gate opened and the apocalypse really got going. So Tessa had every right to think he was crazy.

Especially since he'd been spouting shit about being from the future that he'd just assumed Cas' knew about.

"Look, I know how it sounds," he conceded after another moment, his green eyes searching her much lighter ones as they stood a scant half foot apart. "But he's going to make that deal, and I have to stop him."

Her eyes shuttered for a moment and she finally took that half step back, putting an appropriate amount of space between them once more. "It's not your fight anymore, Dean."

"Bullshit." Tessa's eyes snapped back to his with raised eyebrows, but he plowed on ahead. "I know that's not true, because I've done this all before, alright, Tess? You may not believe me, but my dad is going to die and I'm not. So no, my fight isn't even getting started yet, sweetheart."

She didn't respond, just stared at him with that icy calm that had always infuriated the action-trained hunter. Movement caught his eye and Dean turned his head back to Sam, who was climbing to his feet. His eyes were red and puffy, but he had pulled composure across himself like a well-wrapped security blanket. It hurt Dean's heart to see him put that hard hunter's mask back on and pretend he hadn't just watched his brother die.

The kid gripped the Ouija box tight to his side and trudged past the reaper and brother he couldn't see, back to Dean's room. The ghost of a hunter turned back to Tessa, resolve firm and time up.

"You want to ease me into some Dr. Phil transition crap, then help me. You reapers care about the natural order, right? Well my dad's about to do something pretty damn _unnatural_. So help stop him, and I'm all yours."

Tessa, head turned to track the still living Winchester boy as he walked past, turned back to face her charge. She tilted her head to the side slightly, once more trying to parse his honesty. He was a hard one to read. "You'll come with me?"

Despite having already found resolve in the answer, Dean still found it hard to swallow. It had seemed easier when it was Cas he was talking to. The reality that they were talking about his actual death warred for control over the knowledge that he knew it wouldn't happen anyway. But if it did…. He tossed the thought away. If it did, then it did. He'd deal with that bridge when he got to it, like he always did.

"If I stay dead, then yeah, I'll go with you." He shrugged carelessly, but he could tell by the sharpness in her eyes and the fractional relaxing of her shoulders that she finally believed him. "Just don't get your hopes up. Death doesn't really stick around me."

The frown was almost cute on her round face, especially with the cynical look that said ' _I've heard that before, bucko_.' He pushed past her, following his brother back into the room where his body lay.

-o-o-o-

Tessa let Dean pass without trying to stop him. Her sea-green eyes stared sightlessly at the floor a dozen feet away, mind racing with the request. Help? That was her job, after all. Perhaps not stopping demon deals, though she detested them as surely as any reaper should. They broke the rules of nature. They forced death before it's time and roped souls into a fate they couldn't possibly have contemplate in full, having no experience of it, when they agreed to it.

It was a cheat, and Tessa despised cheats.

But reaping Dean Winchester was her current job. His soul was in her care, and it was her duty to carry him to Heaven, to be at rest in a paradise he had earned after years of hardship.

Her eyes slid across the tiled floor to a pair of black loafers, then up translucent slacks to the shadowy figure in a trench coat who had remained behind after the hunter took off. A faded echo of an angel that had been one step behind the ghost of her charge ever since she'd first come to collect him.

Piercing blue eyes regarded her fiercely, challenging her right to interfere even though Castiel could do nothing to stop her and they both knew it.

"He should be at rest," she tried to reason with the shadow of the guardian angel. Her voice was soft, her eyes understanding. To be honest, she wasn't even sure why she was explaining herself to him; she had no obligation to do so. "You need to let him go. You're the only thing keeping him tethered to his body."

The angel did not yield.

"You know he has to move on."

If anything, that blue gaze glowed brighter and his hands clenched into fists. "He has work to do."

With that, the shadow strode forward with purpose, past Tessa to follow his human charge once more. He left behind the reaper, who turned to watch him disappear into the hospital room with a worried frown, no answers, and many, many questions.

-o-o-o

The doctors had cleared out of Dean's room, and the one nurse who stayed behind to answer any questions Sam might have was politely dismissed by the young hunter. Dean entered just as Sam was settling on the ground, pulling out the Ouija board.

"Don't make fun of me for this," Sam muttered miserably as he set the board down between them. His hands were shaking and he quickly clenched them across the top of his thighs. Dean settled cross-legged in front of him, no good in the face of his brother's obvious pain. Sam closed his eyes for a moment before placing steady hands on the planchette. "God, just…just please still be here, Dean."

"I'm here, brother," the spirit answered steadily, injecting more confidence and comfort than he felt into the words, even if Sammy couldn't hear them. Dean settled his own hands atop the wooden indicator.

Sam took a deep breath, and Dean moved the planchette to the word _'Yes_.' His kid brother let out a breath as shaky as it was shocked, staring at the thing that he definitely hadn't moved himself.

"Dean?"

"Gotta start asking more than just 'yes' questions, Sammy," the hunter chided lightly, but he gave the indicator a little wiggle where it sat already atop the affirmative. Sam breathed out a happy little noise.

"Are you….Are you okay?"

Dean moved the indicator to 'No' even as Sam muttered what a stupid question that had been, but before his brother could do more than frown down at the resulting answer, Dean was moving the planchette again. His brother read each letter aloud as Dean dragged both their hands across the board.

"D-A-D."

When the small plank of wood with the hallowed out circle stopped on the final 'D' and didn't move again, Sam blinked. "Dad?"

The planchette slid quickly across the board to settle on 'Yes' once more.

"What about Dad?" Sam was clearly confused, but he also didn't know how much Dean was able to see and hear while having an out of body experience. Perhaps he didn't know where their father was, or if he was alright. "Dad's fine. He's two floors down: broke his arm and collar bone in the crash but he's okay."

Dean let out a frustrated noise his brother couldn't hear, and slid the little wooden indicator across the board again.

"D-E-A-" Sam cut off his reading of the letters with a frown, despite the fact that his brother's ghost continued to move the planchette across the letters. "A deal? What deal?"

"Can't answer you if you don't read, Sam," Dean muttered. "Work with me here!"

"Y-E-D." Sam waited for more, but the plank stopped moving and he sat there, blinking. He repeated the letters, but they didn't spell any word he knew. Dealyed. Delayed? Dean wasn't usually dyslexic. Deal, yed? Okay, maybe an acronym. Y.E.D. He ran the letters through his head over and over again. When realization hit, he wanted to kick himself for taking so long. "The Yellow Eyed Demon."

The little slip of wood slid so quickly to the 'Yes' that Sam was sure it would go right off the board and skid across the floor. He sat up straighter, back tightening at the jolt of fear shooting down his spine.

"Yellow Eyes is coming here?"

The planchette wiggled atop the 'Yes' but then rifted to "M" and "E" before going back to the 'D', then the 'E', 'A', and Sam suddenly got it. The air in his lungs left with a punch to his gut.

"Dad is going to make a deal with Yellow Eyes to save you."

The plank hesitated for only a second, if that, before it slid over to the 'Yes'. Sam was on his feet faster than Dean could even track. The tall hunter stared down at the board with frantic eyes, chest heaving as fear and realization spiked his heartrate and filled his body with a buzzing tension.

"We have to stop him. Dean, he has the stuff to summon a demon!"

The planchette spun around the 'Yes', but Sam didn't see it. He was already out the door and heading for the stairs at a breakneck speed that had nurses and doctors yelling after him. Dean scrambled to his feet as well, jumping needlessly over the Ouija board to follow after.

He skidded to a halt just outside the door when he saw Tessa leaning against the wall, staring up at him. Sam was disappearing rapidly down the hall, and Dean glanced over the reaper's shoulder at him, before refocusing, reluctantly, on her.

"You gonna help, or what?" he asked, tone quite telling of the answer he thought he'd receive.

She pushed off the wall, uncrossing her arms but still regarding him with the same iciness that she carried like a well-worn sweater. "I don't like demons working _my_ turf. So, if what you say is true, then yes, I'll help."

Surprise painted his face, but Dean didn't let it slow him down for long. "Great. Let's go."

He went to push past her once more, but she extended her arm in front of his chest. The spirit of the hunter turned to her, expression growing thin on patience, but it did not phase the reaper. "After we stop your father, your soul is the first one I'm reaping, Dean. Understand that."

Dean pressed past her arm and headed for the stairs after his brother.

-o-o-o-

Sam rounded the corner into his dad's room at a far more moderate pace than he would have preferred, but given how the hospital staff was yelling at his reckless speed, he had genuine concerns of them throwing him out and then who would stop his father from doing something so damn incredibly stupid.

The fear that had gripped him as he ran – more like barreled – down the two flights between floors had been all-encompassing. Because halfway down that first flight, taking the stairs three at a time, it had occurred to his overly-active brain, which never shut off no matter how much he wanted it to, that unless Dad has said something out loud with Dean's spirit in the room ( _doubtful_ ), there was only one other way his brother could know about their father's intentions.

It didn't take a genius to put two and two together. This had happened last time, and they were about to lose their father if he couldn't change it. _This_ is what Dean had been talking about only days ago. _This_ was where John Winchester died, throwing himself in front of the Yellow Eyed Demon far more literally than Sam could ever have guessed. This is where they were going to lose their father.

Damn John Winchester, was all Sam could think. Their father who couldn't even give his sons time to come up with something on their own. Sam could save Dean. Sam _would_ save Dean. And they didn't have to resort to selling anyone's soul to do it.

His grip on the doorframe was aching as he stared into his father's empty hospital room.

"No," Sam muttered, quickly crossing the threshold and looking around the space as if that might change its lack of occupant. He tried not to panic; Dad had said he was scheduled for more X-rays, and it was possible that's where he was.

His mind balked. If that was true, then where was the duffel bag full of supplies to summon a _damn demon_? He ripped open the one cabinet of the hospital's bed side table, the only place to hide a bag that size. Sam's stomach plummeted when there was nothing inside but a balled up hospital gown. His father's clothes were gone too, leaving just his cell phone and a magazine on the bed's attached table.

"Shit," he muttered, then repeated the noise louder, kicking the side of the bed swiftly. A nurse passing by outside hesitated at the door, causing Sam to freeze in apprehension. He couldn't afford to have hospital staff lecturing him or, heaven forbid, kicking him out. She paused long enough to send him a warning look before carrying on her way.

Sam breathed out shakily, heart pounding. "Dean, if you're here, I'll take the lower floors. Can you…. Can you make noise or something if you find him?"

The attached table on the bed rattled, the edges of the magazine flapped beneath the weight of John's abandoned cell phone, and Sam took that as a yes. Then he was out the door and headed for the stairs to the first floor, too anxious to wait for an elevator when his dad could be making a deal with the yellow eyed demon.

-o-o-o-

Dean turned to Tessa as they both hustled into the hallway, following Sam's lead. "I'll take the roof, you grab the ones in between."

The reaper pushed herself in front of him before he could make a break for it, holding out her arm for good measure. Her sea-green eyes stared at him, unimpressed but perhaps a tad amused. " _I'll_ take the roof. Between the two of us, I'm the one equipped to handle a demon."

The hunter pulled a face. "Hey. I was getting pretty good with the magazine!"

She spared him another amused-not-impressed glance, taking a step backwards. Her form shifted once more, shedding the persona of Tessa in favor of that creepy ass death-wraith-ghost thing she actually was, then shot up through the ceiling. Dean was still grumbling about his capability as a hunter – even a ghost hunter ( _a badass ghost hunter, damnit_ ) – as he started his search for his father on the current floor, though he was pretty damn sure the man had enough smarts not to summon a demon right under his sons' noses. He'd most likely go for the roof or the basement, if this place even had one.

Again, Dean wished he could remember how this went down the first time. He'd woken up, memory-less, with his dad coming into his room minutes later. And minutes after that, he'd been dead.

The hunter shook his head, forcing himself to focus as he started checking rooms, stairwells, even janitor closets. Meanwhile, he viciously bit back the desperate, screaming fear that his father wasn't going to be summoning a demon in some supply closet.

-o-o-o-

John stood, paused, hand outreached but mind heavy, in front of the poorly lit door. He'd stumbled on it more by accident then on purpose, just looking for a space far enough away from his sons that Sam wouldn't interfere, wouldn't get caught up in it.

He'd have gone to the other side of the city – hell, the other side of the state – if he could have. There was something primal within him that fought the very idea of summoning that yellow eyed bastard so close to his kids. But it wasn't an option.

They were the reason he was doing this, he had to remind himself. All it took was one thought of Dean, dying seven floors above him, and he hefted the duffle bag full of supplies over his good shoulder. With steeled resolve, he forced his way through the _"Employees Only"_ marked door and into the secluded darkness within.

-o-o-o-

Sam was getting frantic. It had been more than fifteen minutes since he'd discovered his father's room empty. He'd cleared the parking garage first when a hurried search of the main floor of the hospital had yielded no underground levels. The connected parking structure made the next best sense for somewhere a hunter could quietly summon a demon out of the way of bystanders. But the three leveled building had yielded no results, and now the young man was back to square one, rushing across the covered bridge between buildings and the east stairwell back down to the main lobby of the hospital. He'd taken the west staircase going over, and he needed to cover every base.

Rounding the final landing that led back into the busy main floor of the hospital, Sam drew up short at an unmarked, brown door just to the side of the lobby entrance. It had a handle and deadbolt lock and no windows, unlike the push-bar and crisscrossed glass window of the lobby door, through which Sam could see the occasional visitor or nurse pass by in the room beyond.

The west stairwell hadn't _had_ an unmarked maintenance door. That, or in his rush to get to the parking garage, he'd run right past it and hadn't looked back.

Cursing, Sam gave the knob a quick twist and a push. The handle rattled, but the door didn't budge otherwise and Sam didn't have time to find something to pick the lock with. He glanced quickly through the little window into the lobby, waiting for a clear moment, before he delivered a fierce kick to the rusty thing, and it gave with a crack.

Not waiting to see if anyone had heard, he took the stairs that lay beyond two at a time, until he came to a long hallway. It was painted that same egg white as every hospital ever and, with the accent of a flickering florescent light set into the ceiling and dirty linoleum floor, looked like the beginning of every horror movie monster moment.

Sam ignored all of that, and took off for the far end and the door marked _"Employees Only"._

-o-o-o-

"You still need to sweeten the pot, John."

Azazel grinned sinisterly at the hunter who stood across from him in the basement, eyeing the two demon orderlies he'd brought with him. John's good hand tightened into a fist at his side, and the demon knew he'd won.

"What do you want?"

The Prince of Hell tsk'ed, turning his body away in mock disappointment as he swung his arm to the side. "Now, it's not nearly as fun if you don't at least _guess_." He turned back to the human, a predatory gleam in his eyes as they flickered yellow. "A competent hunter like you? I'm sure you already know."

John's body was stiff as a board, marine training kicking in as he stared down no less than death itself. But the man was a father, and he wasn't here for himself. That's why humans were so easy to play, really. You just had to know what made them tick.

"Me."

"Bingo!" Azazel clasped his hands in front of his body and smiled at the hunter. "Your soul, to be specific. You know how these things work, John. You want a miracle? You gotta provide the juice."

The human clenched his teeth, but Azazel knew he'd already made up his mind. Things were finally playing out as they'd predicted. Leave it to John Winchester to get them back on track.

"You'll fix him up? All the way?"

The demon shrugged. "Not me personally, but I know a girl."

John's eyes narrowed, but the Prince of Hell stretched out his hand.

"Shake on it?"

A noise back the way they'd come – the sound of a door forcefully opening – stopped each of them. The two demons he'd brought with him for show glanced at one other, then him, but he shook his head and waved them away. They hesitated for only a moment before stepping back, melting into the shadows and out of sight.

John started forward with a worried look he couldn't school quickly enough. It told the demon exactly who he feared was on the other end of that noise. Not that Azazel had expected anyone other than the boys to interfere. He turned his outstretched palm to the side, halting the hunter before he could run into that hand, face reddening at the gall of the demon.

Azazel just gave him a warning look and disappeared into thin air.

-o-o-o-

Sam walked with quick steps past water heaters and old machinery, searching down each little corridor and niche formed by the large tanks and pipes. He rounded one of them and stopped, breath leaving his body at the sight he had been desperately hoping for, but really wasn't expecting.

John Winchester stood in the middle of a small room, space carved by the layout of the old metal cylinders and pipes and control panels. Sam swallowed heavily, taking a step forwards, only to pause at the look on his father's face.

It was worn. Tired and weary and downcast, in a way the youngest Winchester had never quite seen from his stony father.

"Dad?"

John met his eyes, but it was clearly a struggle to do so. There was shame and fear there, in all the righteous ways John Winchester conveyed those emotions. And Sam knew. He knew without his gaze dropping to the floor and the six candle flames flickering in the slight draft of the basement room. He knew without the symbol drawn in chalk on the cold cement or the bowl of still smoking ingredients sitting in the center of it.

He was too late. John Winchester had already made a deal with the devil – or damn near close enough.

"Dad…"

"It's going to be okay, son." His father offered a tight smile, and Sam knew it was a gesture of goodbye. He took a step forward, anger and desperation suddenly flaring in him like a supernova. But John stiffened, eyes shifting to something just behind him even as he called out in warning, "Sam!"

A hand landed on his shoulder, and the world darkened into oblivion before he could even fully turn around.

-o-o-o-

The youngest Winchester slumped to the floor underneath Azazel's hand, and John had the Colt drawn, cocked, and centered on the demon in the blink of even one of his impressive eyes. The Prince of Hell regarded the hunter with a moment of admiration (he could admit being impressed, even of a mere human), before his expression settled on something far more condescending.

"Come on, John, we both know you're not going to shoot me."

The gun didn't waiver, but John's gaze slid to his collapsed son. Azazel rolled his eyes even as he stepped over the boy.

"Don't get your tighty-whities in a twist there, Daddy. He's just taking a nap. Can't have him interfering in our little deal. Unless, of course," the demon paused for dramatic effect, purposefully dragging his eyes slowly over to the downed hunter, loving the way John Winchester shook with anger at him so much as looking at the kid, "you wanted to offer him as payment instead?"

It didn't matter if John knew he was being played, and honestly Azazel wasn't sure he did. The hunter was almost shaking in rage now, and it was quite likely he didn't have the bandwidth to disregard Azazel's words for the manipulative taunt they were. Another problem with humans. So emotional.

"Why don't I just shoot you, and summon another demon to do the job." John answered between clenched teeth, but they both knew it was posturing and not much more.

"Sure, you could do that." Azazel disappeared in the blink of an eye, reappearing just behind John's right shoulder. The hunter, for his credit, spun and retrained the gun on him quickly. Not quick enough to save his life, had Azazel wanted to kill him the old fashion way. But still quite quick. The demon reasoned he had a good chance at actually clipping him with that peashooter.

Not that that was going to happen.

The two demons he'd brought with him re-emerged from the shadows at a single hand gesture, coming back up to flank not him, but John Winchester, who eyed them wearily.

"You could probably get me with that little nuisance," Azazel gestured his chin at the Colt, "but I doubt even you would be able to get all three of us. And my boys have very specific orders to tear you limb from limb if anything happens to me."

The borrowed flesh of his minions split disgustingly into malicious grins, wide and dangerous, showing their pearly white teeth and all the things they'd do to him.

"Then you're dead, Dean's dead, and Sammy's all alone and… so _vulnerable_." Azazel smiled so sickly sweet it hurt even his teeth. He couldn't begin to imagine – gleefully – how it must hurt John. "Ripe for the taking, if you will."

"You son of a bitch." John's words were rock steady, rightfully pissed. The gun never wavered. Azazel still knew he'd won. He knew this hunter, and that was defeat in his voice, not bravado.

The demon held out his hand once more. "So, where were we?"

-o-o-o-

Tessa was concluding a thorough search of the roof when it happened. The few lights that peppered the upright structures – the stairwell building, and several along the edges of the roof – began flickering. She frowned as they did so at the same time, but out of sync with one another. Not a single short or momentary power shortage then.

The change had her tense before she felt it – the approaching presence of something sick and dark. The reaper spun on the roof, looking for the source of it, but nothing was there. Tessa glanced over her shoulder at the stairwell, but the door remained shut. A ventilation shaft rattled to her left and she spun to face it, just as black smoke began pouring out of it.

The reaper recognized it for what it truly was immediately, and she stumbled back in shock at the raw power of a Prince of Hell.

"No, stop." She shook her head, trying to abandon her human form for her incorporeal one before it could catch her, but the slimy black essence was already enveloping her. "You can't do this!"

The demon wrapped around her – smothering her, _choking_ her – and filled her essence with his own.

-o-o-o-

He was three floors from the roof when the lights started flickering. Dean stopped in his search, pulling his head out from yet another room empty of anyone but an ailing patient, to stare up at the hallway ceiling as the florescent bulbs sputtered and struggled. It lasted less than thirty seconds, but it was enough to have dread pooling in the hunter's incorporeal stomach.

Only three things made lights flicker like that. Ghosts, Demons, and Reapers. And all three of them were in the hospital at that very second, Dean was sure of it.

"Tessa," he whispered, still staring at the burning bulb above him, and possibly the roof beyond. He took off at a run. She had gone for the roof and hadn't returned yet; she must have found Azazel. Reaper or not, she was going to need all the backup she could get.

Dean pushed straight through the stairwell door, having figured out about eighteen room searches ago that he could just stick his head straight through a wall so long as he didn't think about it (you do not want to know what happened the one time he did think about it). The little trick tripled his search rate, even if it sent shivers through his body every time.

The hunter was rounding the second landing up when soft, steady footsteps above halted his movement. He gripped the railing, staring up the stairwell as Tessa rounded the corner, sauntering down step by step like she had nowhere better to be than a vaguely downward direction.

"Tess?" Dean let out a breath of relief. She looked unharmed, though he didn't exactly appreciate the snail's pace as she proceeded down the steps towards him, head lowered and eyes fixed on the stairs. Her untouched appearance meant the roof was clear and the flickering lights were more likely his dad summoning a fucking demon than the reaper finding one. Dean's hand fisted around the railing and specks of ice started forming on the metal around his fist as his frustration and panic surged. "Did you find anything?"

"No, I didn't find anything," the reaper answered calmly as she came to stand on the step directly in front of him, that cold, somber expression ever in place.

Dean hung his head for a moment, breathing through the panic that instantly tried to solidify into defeat. They still had time. They'd find him. They had to. Dad was going to be fine.

"It found me."

The hunter lifted his head, brow already furled in confusion and a question on his lips, when he met Tessa's eyes. They were a sickly pale yellow.

Dean scrambled back with a cry, but Not-Tessa shot her arm out with deadly precision, wrapping freezing, painful fingers around his throat. The grip was enough to bruise flesh that didn't even exist, and certainly enough to keep him from the two-step fall he probably would have taken on his ass, even as a ghost.

He'd have preferred the fall.

"Today's your lucky day, kiddo," Not-Tessa said with a wicked grin Dean recognized only too well.

He didn't have time to yell – to question – to fight – before a hand slammed onto his forehead, fingers curling around his skull like talons. Everything went white and he woke up, shooting upright, in a hospital bed with no recollection of how he got there.

-o-o-o-

Sam came to confused. It was dark where he was, with little lights flickering just past the clarity of his vision, which was struggling back into focus slowly and with a lot of effort. The young hunter hauled himself up onto his hands and knees with a groan. Nothing hurt, but his head weighed twice as much as it should and he didn't know where he was or how he'd gotten there.

The clarity of both the room and his memory returned with time. Little candles lit the cold cement painted with white symbols – a summoning spell – next to an open gym bag, clearly rummaged through – Bobby's, once full of herbs.

Sam blinked at the setup once. That was Bobby's bag. He'd given it to Sam, along with the info that the stuff he'd requested sure as hell wasn't for protection.

The hunter straightened, head clearing out of necessity as he stared at the summoning ritual in pure terror. His father had been here, he'd been here and then… The hunter scrambled to his feet, brushing at his shoulder where he could still feel the weight of the hand that had somehow knocked him out.

 _Azazel_.

He took off running, back the way he'd came. If his dad wasn't here anymore, but the demon had been… Oh god, they were too late.

 _Please. Please don't let it be too late._

Sam knew the second the elevator doors pinged open on the seventh floor. He pushed through the widening gap before there was even enough space for his large body. He knew the second he saw the crowd of people outside of his brother's room. The commotion was loud and frantic and the many faces were filled with stoic professionalism and confusion. He knew before all that, really, because it wasn't John's room his feet had automatically taken him to, but Dean's.

It still punched him straight through the gut to hear his brother's cries: anguished screams that meant he was awake and alive, as surely as their father no longer was. Sam pushed through nurses and bystanders and into the room to see his dad, unmoving on the floor, surrounded by men and women desperately trying to revive him. There was a mask over his face, hands drawing away from his chest, fingers pressed to his neck and more to his wrist. Two nurses and a doctor were holding Dean back on the bed as he fought to get to their father's side.

"Alright. Let's call it," one of the doctors muttered, wiping the back of his sleeve across his sweat-slicked face as he pulled away from the body on the ground. John wasn't moving, head lolled to the side as they pulled the oxygen mask away, half-lidded eyes staring, unseeing, past his youngest son.

"No," Sam whispered, staggering against the doorframe. There were arms around him, holding him upright, maybe keeping him from falling, maybe fighting him from getting to his dad's side like his brother was trying to do. He didn't know.

"Time of death: 10:41 am."

Dean's unearthly howl was what finally sent Sam to his knees.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns:** I'm a terrible no good dirty rotten author. But you all are beautiful._

 _ **John's Death:**_ _I probably should have warned about character death, but I also reeeeally didn't want to spoil it._ _While keeping John alive would have been very interesting story-wise (seeing how he would interact with Dean knowing he was from the future, how the timeline might have changed with his presence, meeting Cas and some of the other supernaturals, etc), I couldn't do it. Writing him is so damn hard for me, and I was truly worried it would be my – and the story's – undoing. So, off he goes. Some things just have to stay the same ;)_


	37. Season 2: Chapter 4

_**Summary**_ _: Cas pulled his broken body over the grass-covered graves beneath them. The buried dead that he and Sam would soon be among. But Dean was alive and only a few feet away. Only a few feet and he could fix this. He would fix it. There was still time: time to send him back, time to make the other choice, time to choose a different road. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **Chapter Warnings** : Strong language, cuz Dean is piiiiiiissed._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 4

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _Dean shot up in the bed with momentum he had certainly not possessed a second ago. Energy flooded his body and he fought, momentarily, with the tube down his throat and the wires sticking out of every part of him. He gagged and chocked around the intubation, coughing deep as he hauled the thing up and out of his throat with mucus and disgust._

 _Shit that hurt._

 _His body shook from the exertion, discomfort, and shock as he tossed the thing to the side with a frown. He went for the IV in his arm next, pulling the needle out with a hiss. God, he hated hospitals. Dean left the heart monitor on, not wanting to deal with the rush of a false Code Blue just because his finger wanted freedom from the clip. Instead, he looked around the room._

 _He was tense. Terrified, even, though he didn't know why. The last thing he remembered was that cabin, albeit in bits and pieces. And if he was in the hospital, alive, then there wasn't much to fear._

 _Except an empty room and no clue what condition Sam was in._

 _And Dad._

 _Dean's breath stilled, drawing in slowly as realization came back to him and the terror returned. The heart monitor started beeping faster as he quickly catalogued his injuries, which totaled a grand tally of absolutely friggin' zero._

 _Intubated with zero injuries?_

 _Not a chance in hell he came by that naturally._

 _He paled as the words – nothing more than an idiom – brought on realization a lot more real than some turn of phrase._

 _ **Hell**_.

 _"No," he whispered to the empty room, panic running through him like a freight train. "No, no no. I have more time. I have more time!"_

 _It was May. It had to still be May. Azazel had held them in that god awful cabin, but John had come for them. He'd been in there at the end, Dean was sure of it. His dad had come for him and Sammy, and the three of them had all gotten in the Impala and driven_ _ **away**_ _._

 _"No. No, no, no."_

 _They'd driven away in the Impala. Just like last time._

 _"Dean."_

 _The hunter looked up from his bed, eyes already watery and full of denial and anger and fear, as John Winchester walked into his room with the look of a dead man painted in every line of his body._

 _"Dad," Dean breathed out, barely a whisper. "Tell me you didn't."_

 _John smiled a small little smile at him, and Dean's heart broke for a second time in his life. "You know, when you were a kid, I'd come home from a hunt and after what I'd seen, I'd be….I'd be wrecked."_

 _"Don't. Please, dad, don't." Dean was shaking his head, trying to climb out of the bed but his legs wouldn't listen and John was walking up to the side. He knew this speech. He'd heard it again and again for_ _ **months**_ _after his dad had sold his soul to save him._

 _"You'd come up to me and you, you'd put your hand on my shoulder, and you'd look me in the eye and you'd…" John's eyes were watery and he blinked through them, giving a small, nostalgic laugh. "You'd say, 'It's okay, Dad.'"_

 _"Dad."_

 _John reached out and cupped the back of his son's neck, staring into those eyes that somehow knew exactly what he'd done. He didn't know what was going on with his son, but Sam had been right. It was still Dean in there, even if he knew things he shouldn't._

 _"You shouldn't have had to say that to me. I should have been the one saying it to you."_

 _"I was happy to say it," Dean whispered and the tears started running down his cheeks, despite his urge to look away, to pretend it wasn't happening. But he knew this was the last time he was going to see his father, and he wasn't going waste it staring at the bedsheets. "You did the best you could, Dad."_

 _"No, I didn't." John bent forward, pressing his forehead to his son's. His second hand joined the first, wrapped around Dean's neck in a comforting way he had so rarely done in the past. He should have done it more. He should have hugged his sons more. "I'm sorry, Dean."_

 _"Don't," his son whispered, half hiccupping past the word as he reached up and wrapped his hands around his father's forearms, hanging off of him like a child._

 _"I need to tell you something, son."_

 _Dean swallowed heavily, his father's head pressed to his, that voice whispering so much like it had happened last time that he almost couldn't breathe. "I know. Dad, I_ _ **know**_ _."_

 _John pulled away slightly, releasing his son's neck enough to stare into his clear, green eyes. Dean blinked, but refused to look away._

 _"I won't do it. I won't," he reiterated, water swimming in his eyes as his father's last words echoed in his mind. They would not be his last words this time, Dean would make sure of it. "I'm going to save him, Dad. I promise you that."_

 _His father looked uncertain what to say, but he found himself nodding slowly at the conviction in his son's voice and, more than anything, in those eyes. Somehow, Dean did know, of that John was sure. So he released his son's neck slowly, pulling away and letting the touch linger, if only to feel his son, alive and breathing, beneath his hand one final time._

 _"And you…you hold on down there." Dean swallowed heavily, and John could only mirror the movement. He didn't know how his son knew all of this, but the fierceness in those eyes silenced any questions he might have had. "In a year- In a year, they'll be a hell gate. You get yourself out, alright? Promise me you'll be there."_

 _"I'll be there," John whispered almost numbly. He didn't know how his son knew but it didn't really matter anymore. His part in this fight was over, and he had his own battles upcoming. A year in Hell. He had no idea if he could hold out that long, but for his son, he would try. "Tell your brother…"_

 _"I will," Dean whispered, and John grabbed his shoulder, offering his oldest a smile through tears._

 _"I'm proud of you, son."_

 _Then he looked over his shoulder at something Dean couldn't see, and it was the last thing John Winchester ever did._

-o-o-o-

Dean stared, eyes unfocused and gaze all but dead, at the funeral pyre burning hot and steady. It was early afternoon and he and Sam had driven out into the less populated woodlands of east Michigan in order to find a final resting spot for their dad. It had taken them almost an hour to build the pyre, using palates they'd snagged from the back of a grocery store and plenty of branches and limbs from the surrounding trees.

They'd done so in absolute silence, each in their own heads and their own mourning.

10:41 am.

John Winchester died at 10:41 am. Didn't matter that it was two months early and a whole bucket load of changes later. Ten forty one in the fucking morning. Again.

Dean was so tired. So. Damn. Tired. Tired of fighting this fight, tired of losing it.

He stared, numb, at the flicker of orange and yellow and reds that blurred in front of him. He was so done, so over this, over Time and always being one step behind the bitch when he should, by the very friggin definition of coming from the future, be at least a step ahead. He was done trying to change things and losing.

What was the point? What had been the point of any of this? Of sending him back in the first place. This wasn't a second chance; it was torture, was what it was. Worse than Hell. Worse than being a demon or bearing the mark.

This, of all the things he'd ever faced, _this fucking thing_ was going to be what broke him. If only Zachariah and Michael had known. If only Crowley or Abbadon, Eve or Raphael had known. All you had to do to break the mighty Dean Winchester was make him relive it all again, unable to change anything.

He'd known, that morning he'd woken up in the Impala in 2005 and not 2016, the morning he'd realized his father was still alive, that he'd never be able to save him. He'd _known_ that. He'd tried like hell to keep him and Sammy away from that suicide mission wrapped in their father's clothes. Still, _still_ , as soon as he'd seen the man, as soon as he'd opened Bobby's basement door and seen his dad, free from the Baku's dream power, leaning on Sam, weak as a kitten but very much alive, Dean _knew_ he was screwed. There was no way he couldn't try – couldn't hope – that maybe, just maybe, if he was fast enough, strong enough, clever enough, he could stop it.

He was an idiot.

"Tell me we kill him."

Dean turned his head to take in his little brother, standing with slumped shoulders, hands shoved in his pockets, and head hung down damn near his chest. The older Winchester and man from the future took a deep breath to still the sudden ache in his heart on top of his own despair and downright darkness. Sam was fighting with everything he had against the tears gathered in his eyes, the trembling of his bottom lip and the reddening of his nose. The kid looked a damn near wreck, and rightly so.

This was Sam's first time losing their father. He hadn't lived it before, been prepared or forewarned it was coming, because Dean hadn't told him. Dean hadn't told him anything because he hadn't been able to man up and be the bearer of bad news and a crap ton of crap. Hadn't been ready for the way Sam would look at him. Well, that sure as shit at cost them.

Dean's anger fell to the wayside. It didn't dissipate – Dean Winchester rage didn't just fade away or stop existing – but it was pushed violently aside to be dealt with later because his little brother needed him.

"Tell me we kill him," Sam repeated. It was obvious from the murderous look in his watery eyes, tipping over as he blinked and trailing down red cheeks rubbed raw, that he was honestly starting to wonder if they even could.

"We kill him." There was a very obvious, if silent, ' _but'_ that echoed through the woodland clearing.

"…But it cost us Dad," his younger brother filled in the silence, staring at the slowing burning pyre and the only source of warmth in what was feeling more and more like a damn cold world.

Dean didn't answer for a moment – thought about not answering at all – but he knew he needed to knock that shit off, and soon. He couldn't keep lying or omitting truths (splitting hairs), if he expected to change anything. Sure, there were going to be things he didn't need to tell Sammy – didn't want to – but here on out, as they watched their father burn, he was going to have to start being honest. More than that, he was going to have to be friggin' forthcoming, something he hadn't mastered in damn near forty years of trying, and which might have cost John Winchester his life this time around.

Not that he had much faith (or strength or whatever you wanted to call it) left that it would make much difference. That he – they – could change anything at all.

"Costs us a lot more than that," he finally muttered, tone carefully blank of the bitterness that infested his soul. Their dad was gone, despite Dean knowing it was coming. What reason did he have to believe that in a year, Sammy wouldn't be as well? Then he'd be on his way to hell, and this would all have been _pointless_.

"Dean-"

He shook his head, refusing to look anywhere but those climbing flames. "Not now, Sammy."

"When?" Because Sam understood, he got it, really, that right now might not exactly be the best moment to be asking. Not standing in front of John's body, a hunter's funeral for their own father. But if not now, then when? Because they'd had plenty of time leading up to this, and still Dean had said nothing. "I need to know, Dean. If I'd known about the deal-"

"You'd what?" Dean cut in harshly. Sam turned to him, eyes hurt, but Dean was barely looking at him. "Not left Dad's side? He'd have found a way, Sammy, and you know it."

His kid brother flinched under the harsh assault as Dean finally turned to him, arms flung wide, eyes fierce with an anger Sam knew wasn't directed at him, and all but foaming at the mouth with hatred for something that didn't exist and, if it did, wasn't corporeal enough to punch in the face.

Dean was done. He was done, and he was _angry._ Angry at himself for failing. Angry at himself for hoping. Angry at John Fucking Winchester for pulling the same damn martyr play twice. Angriest at Time and Fate and fucking Destiny, written in stone, for letting it happen. For demanding that it must.

"So let's go back further. I told you about the crash, would you have taken a different road? Not gotten in the car in the first place?" Dean shook his head with a hollow, broken laugh and his arms fell, lifeless, to his side. Sam swallowed, knowing that even if he'd known – even if he'd known there was a demon out there in the dark, waiting to crash the Impala off course – he couldn't have stayed in that cabin with his brother bleeding out in his arms. "It wasn't supposed to happen for _months._ Telling you about it would have done jack shit. Don't you get it, Sammy? There's no point. We _tried_ and we _failed_. We can't change anything! Coming back, changing the future? It's _useless!_ "

Dean was screaming, red faced and so close to breaking. Sam's heart hurt for his brother so suddenly it stole his breath away. Dean so rarely lost it, especially not in front of Sam, who he saw as needing some sort of macho, invincible, super-hero brother to look up to. Not that he'd been wrong when Sam was young, but he was a man now – an adult – and old enough to know that super-heroes didn't exist. There were only ordinary men and sometimes that was enough.

"No, it's not," he whispered quietly and Dean blinked in the sudden volume change. Wood crackled, trees rustled. Sam stood, hunched with his hands shoved in his pockets, feeling small and fragile, and yet so much stronger than his brother. He could be the pillar of support that Dean usually tried to provide him. "Jess is alive, Dean."

The older hunter went still, an odd and heavy silence wrapped around him. He probably could have used a good screaming match. Hell, he definitely could have used a screaming match, but Sam, always the smart one of the two, wasn't going to give it to him.

Sam been worried – so worried – Dean wasn't going to handle John's death at all. The brother he knew shoved everything down, refused to feel or be weakened by emotions. But this, this Dean from the future seemed already broken, and Sam knew he was reliving this death a second time, probably with twice the guilt now that he'd failed the old man twice.

"I get that in the bigger picture that may not be much," the young hunter continued, staring at his brother imploringly as he pushed his own guilt and grief aside and focused on what they had left, "but it means everything to me."

Even if he never saw her again. Never talked to her again. Jess was alive, and it meant _everything_.

Dean swallowed and suddenly turned back to the pyre, running a hand down his face as he visibly pulled himself together. "I know it does, Sammy."

A section of the pyre collapsed, sending sparks and embers into the air. It should have been beautiful. In a morbid, depressing way that rotted away at their hearts, it still was.

"We have changed other things." Sam gestured to the flames. Perhaps not the best or most appropriate example, but it was the most relevant. Sam tried not to let it tie his tongue or fill his throat as he pushed the words through. "It may be the same result, but it didn't happen the same way, right? It happened sooner."

"How is that in any way a good thing?" His brother's voice was bitter – _angry_ – but Sam had plenty of experience with that.

"It isn't always going to be good, Dean. Change, at any level, is unpredictable! That's why people are so damn scared of it." Logic had always been his best weapon against an overly-emotional, panicking Dean Winchester. Leave it to Sam to be the Spock to his brother's Kirk; a reference Dean would love, if only he was in the mindset to appreciate it. "Look, if time wants to stay the same, then there's probably a balance. For everything we do manage to change, some things have to stay the same."

"Win some, lose some, huh?" Dean smiled bitterly, refusing to look at him as he rubbed harshly at his chest. "Story of our god damn lives."

"We just have to pick our battles," Sam offered with a light headshake, resuming his funeral watch.

His brother didn't answer, but eventually he bent down to the small cooler they'd brought. It had three beers in it: two for the ones still kicking, one they'd pour out for the member they'd lost. The final component to a hunter's funeral, John Winchester style, and the last goodbye from a couple of sons to their father.

-o-o-o-

They worked their way back to the car slowly once the fire had burned down to safe enough levels to leave. They'd parked on the edge of a river, which might have been beautiful and calm any other day, and they'd hiked a ways into the woods that bordered the water and road until they'd found a large field perfect for a hunter's farewell.

Now they were leaning against the old, rotted out fence that lined the edge of the waterway, probably leftover from the days that this was someone's property. They'd broken out another round of beers; one hadn't seemed justice enough for the legend that was their father. Though these they sipped slowly as the mood slipped slowly, but steadily, back to grief and loss.

"Did he say anything to you?"

Sam had been quiet for a while, and Dean was not surprised by the question when his brother finally asked it. They had had this conversation once before, after all.

"No," Dean returned softly as he watched his brother, beer all but untouched in the sasquatch's hand. The man from the future struggled in the silence between them for a moment, knowing what he had to say but dreading every word of it. "Not this time, at least."

Sam's head whipped over to meet his eyes. Dean didn't volunteer the information, but he could see his baby brother's gears churning behind those intelligent hazel eyes. "But…last time?"

The older Winchester didn't need to answer or even nod. Sam already had it figured out.

"Dad knew."

"Not the end game, Sammy." Dean finally turned away, back to the river. "Not about the apocalypse."

"But he knew about the blood." John had told him as much, back in Bobby's yard that day. The last happy memory of his dad, really, and it ate at him now as much as all the bad ones. "He knew Azazel had plans for me, even if he didn't know what they were. Dean, what did he tell you?"

"It doesn't matter-"

"Yes, it _does_!" Sam grabbed his brother's shoulder, forcing the older man to look back at him. Those green eyes were hurting so damn much that Sam found it difficult to keep the gaze, despite it being what he had been aiming for. Still, it didn't change the bare facts. "I need to know all of it. I can't make different choices, can't stop your future from happening, if I don't know what it is I'm trying not to do!"

Dean tried to look away again, guilt and pain weighting those eyes and body down, but Sam shook his shoulder insistently.

"You told me no more lies."

"And I meant it. Not trying to lie to you, Sammy. I just…" Green eyes hesitantly met his and his brother let out a broken, aggravated sigh. "He didn't know what Azazel was doing to you. But he- he wasn't going to let him… let him have you."

The younger hunter stood, gripping his brother's shoulder, as he parsed through the less than straight answer. It didn't take long, and Dean could tell each degree of understanding gained by the way those fingers dug harder and harder into his collarbone.

"Dad…" Sam blinked hard and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing as stiffly as the rest of him. "He told you to kill me."

"He told me to _save you_ ," Dean countered harshly – insistently.

"And if you couldn't?"

The return was more immediate than Dean had been expecting and he went silent. He couldn't hold his baby brother's gaze anymore.

' _That's what I thought.'_ Sam's hand fell from his brother's arm and a dangerous emptiness filled his gut. It was almost like numbness, accept it had a distinct taste of _dark_ to it. Sam didn't know how else to explain it, but whatever it was, it was ugly and it rooted quickly and festered even faster.

The implication of the words that weren't said, said too much. His dad – his _dad,_ the man that had _raised_ him, that should have loved him and cared for him and helped him move to Stanford and been there at his wedding and the birth of their first kid, his first grandkid, _that_ man, who Sam knew was nothing like John Winchester – had told Dean to kill him.

 _'If he can't save you_ ,' a gentle voice called from the depths of that deep, dark pit, fighting against it, though the struggle did not seem to be in its favor. Still, the voice sounded like Jess, and Sam clung to it more desperately than he was proud to admit. _'And you know he'll do everything he can to save you first.'_

 _'What if he can't?'_ He whispered back, but Jess didn't have a response for him.

The quiet between them, broken only by the rustle of the wind and the soft gurgle of moving water over river rock, was heavy and stretched.

"Dad's wrong, Sammy," Dean whispered softly, his gaze directed off to the side, back towards those woods where there father's ashes still sat in a pile of smoldering wood. "Plain and simple. I don't care what he told me or when. He was wrong."

"Maybe he wasn't."

Dean's gaze snapped to Sam's, and suddenly the silence was so much more preferable. "What? _What?"_

The younger hunter winced at the harsh, demanding tone, but he fisted his hands by his sides and stuck his chin out stubbornly. "Dean, if killing me stops the apocalypse-"

"It doesn't. It won't."

Despite Dean's adamant tone, Sam was relentless. "You said-"

"They'll just bring you back, Sam!"

"Not if you shoot me with the Colt."

Silence fell on them once more, this time so thick that it slowed time and blocked all other sounds. No more water, no more bird song or breeze through the trees. Just Dean, staring at his little brother with incredulous, wrecked eyes.

" _Jesus_!" Dean swore, turning away. The move was immediately aborted for, instead, spinning back around to jab a finger in the taller man's direction. "Is this what you call picking battles? Funny, it sounds a lot like _quitting_."

"It's not quitting, Dean, it's tactical."

"Well guess what, Sam; we don't _have_ the Colt. There goes your tactic!" And why hadn't _that_ been something he'd remembered before he'd decided to go comatose in a hospital bed, useless to every damn person on the planet. Not that _that_ had any fucking ground on what had just come out of his brother's mouth. He gritted his teeth and steered the conversation back on god-damn-point. "Even if we did have it, _I'm not killing you!_ "

"We'll get it back." Sam's jaw was just as tight as his brother, hands just as shaky, heart just as heavy and pounding. "We'll get it back from Azazel, and I'll do it myself."

Dean threw his arms up in the air and turned away; it was about all he could do not to punch the stubborn, stupid, selfish kid standing in front of him. That wasn't entirely fair and he knew it, but he also didn't care just then. His brother had just asked him to kill him or, at a minimum, hand over the gun to do it. They weren't a hundred yards or an hour away from where they'd just buried there father. There wasn't much more Dean could care about other than those four fucking words.

Sam, smart enough to know when he was on the verge of his brother's limits, didn't speak. Dean bet he wanted to. He probably had sixteen thousand reasons and no less than four exhibit A, B, C, and Ds to demonstrate his reasoning and point.

It just made him all the more pissed.

They were such fucking martyrs, the both of them. Self-sacrificing sons of bitches. Over and over and over again, they could always save each other, always pull one another out of that kind of talk, but never gave a damn about themselves. Could never see the friggin' light of hope when it was their turn to hold the smoking gun to their head. Well, Dean was sick of it. Color the universe surprised that, of the two of them, _he_ was the one to finally call quits on that line of thinking, but that's just what he was going to do.

He spun around, finger out and jabbing into his brother's chest. "You listen to me, Sammy, because I'm only saying this once. I did _not_ come ten years into the past to relieve all of this shit-" he threw his arm out wildly to the side, encompassing not just the world as a whole, but their father's final resting spot as well- "just to watch you blow your brains out!"

Sam stumbled back a half step, before he righted himself and seemed to remember his earlier resolve. Dean still didn't care.

"So you-" this time he gave his brother a good shove in the shoulder with the flat of his palm, hard enough that Sam bumped into the fence and it leaned dangerous beneath his large size- "are going to suck it up and put a little _faith_ in me. If you can stand there and tell me to pick and choose my battles and not lose friggin' hope that we can change all this, than you can listen to your own damn words for once. And maybe, just maybe, we'll make it out of this with no one else dying!"

Sam held that gaze for as long as he could, but he wasn't a match for the fierceness – the anger and the sadness and the downright pain – before he lowered his head against his brother's onslaught. His own anger and stubbornness was far from fading, but it had always been hard to see his rock of an older brother – and despite the macho front and emotional constipation, he was still a _rock_ – in pain. Pain he was causing by asking something he _knew_ he shouldn't be asking.

It still didn't change his mind, however.

"Dean-"

" _Sammy_."

"I can feel it in me." The quiet admission finally shut his brother up long enough to listen. Sam lifted suspiciously glistening eyes, but if Dean noticed, he didn't react other than to snap his jaw shut. "I know you want to save me, stop the end of the world, but…"

He unclenched and clenched his fingers. That vibration was still there, just beneath the skin. It was faint, and its weakness left an empty feeling flowing through his veins that begged to be filled, to be renewed. And he knew what renewed it, knew what that hollow feeling throughout his body wanted. It terrified him beyond anything he'd ever faced before.

"This…This _thing_ doesn't feel like something you can save me from."

He'd held the Colt to his head twice now and, while each time terrified him, it had terrified him more how ready he had been to do it. How simple the solution seemed. He knew it wasn't sane thought guiding him now, but nothing in the last two weeks of their lives had been sane. And not much on the horizon looked to be either.

Dean was quiet for several moments, staring off away from the river and the world and his brother. "Then we'll find the Colt."

Sam raised his brow at his brother. Caving had been about the last thing he expected, at least not with so little pushing. The younger Winchester fiercely ignored the odd coil of disappointment that filled him at his brother giving up on him so easily. He'd wanted this; he had no place to be annoyed at Dean for agreeing.

But the man from the future wasn't done. He looked at the younger hunter with the same coldness that had first clued Sam into the change in his time-traveling brother. "You said there are two bullets left. You can put one in my head before you deal with yourself."

His body may as well have been the Sahara for how quickly the moisture left Sam's mouth, throat, everything. He might have shriveled away in that second, turned to dust and blown away on the wind for all he knew. Hazel eyes looked away, then back, then couldn't leave. He shifted, tense bravado and anger gone the way of all the saliva in his mouth. He started to shake his head his head, denial on the tip of his suddenly fat tongue, but Dean didn't let him get far.

"You're as bad as Dad if you think I'm not eating one as soon as you're gone." The man from the future turned away, towards Dad's old truck that they had driven here for the funeral. Sam watched him go, watched him climb into the cab and sit behind the wheel, staring at nothing and waiting for his brother to eventually join him.

He knew it was a harsh thing – a cruel thing – to ask of his dangerously codependent, family-loving brother who'd come back from the future to save him. He hadn't yet thought beyond the first step of eliminating himself as a potential cause to the apocalypse. Hadn't thought past the great, infallible John Winchester, knowing it might come to this, and the world riding on his ability to make the right choices this time around. Hadn't thought what Dean would do once he was gone. But even knowing now, even with the painful, deep weight settled in his chest at the thought of it, Sam's opinion on the matter didn't change.

Was it really even debatable? His life for the planet? The math seemed easy to him, even if the steps it took to get there were ugly.

Eventually, he did join his brother in the car, parting with a final goodbye towards the woods and the man there who had both raised him and failed him, in so many ways. Dean tore away from the river with far more aggression than was probably healthy, and they left behind an idyllic view and the burned ashes of a hunter's grave.

-o-o-o-

Dean was done. He had been done at 10:42 am three days ago. Now he was _fucking_ done. Nothing had changed – not _enough_ had changed – and he was at the end of his rope of tolerance, patience, and god damn sanity.

In total, he was done. Done listening to an angel that might be nothing but a memory in his messed up head. Done working his ass off for no reason, with no result. Done being Time's bitch. Just. Fucking. Done.

The car pulled smoothly off the road at the first populated parking lot they came across on their way into and through town. Originally, the plan had been to drive Dad's truck back to Bobby's. The older hunter had already left with the Impala, shortly before the two boys went off to give their father a proper funeral. He'd made himself available for damn near anything either of them could have needed over the past day and a half, but he also knew when he wasn't much needed.

Now, however, Dean was done and that meant Plan F (which he was conveniently calling Plan Fuck It).

Sam furled his brow as they pulled into a mostly empty lot with a spattering of old cars parked here and there in a semi-vacant strip mall. Dean parked a couple spots over from an old Ford Pinto that had seen better days, put the truck in park and pulled the keys from the ignition before tossing them to Sam and pushing open the old, creaky door. Sam, still confused, scrambled out of the car as well, expecting to switch places with Dean.

Only his older brother wasn't headed around the car. He was headed for the Pinto.

"Dean?"

"There's someone I gotta see."

Sam's brow went from furled to brushing his hairline in half a second flat, and the dark pit in his stomach – now mixed in with a dose of guilt – flared to life with a new hefty dash of worry thrown in the mix.

"What? Who?"

Dean just shook his head, rounding the pinto and trying the door. The old thing was actually locked, not that Dean looked surprised.

"Dude, what the hell?" Sam asked, following him to the car. "You're just going to take off? Dad's dead, we just _buried_ him, and you're gonna leave?"

"Told you," his brother gruffed as he glanced around the parking lot before ramming his elbow into the window and shattering it inward. Glass tinkered to the ground and across the seat before Dean finally met his brother's eyes over the roof of the now-stolen car. "There's someone I need to have a chat with. Just head to Bobby's, I'll meet you there in a couple days."

Sam tilted his head dangerously, chin jutting up: a warning move that usually came before he punched whoever he was looking at in the face. Luckily, Dean was spared by the barrier that was his new wheels. "Dean, we need to stick together."

"I'm not leaving, Sam," the older man countered, though he shook his head in annoyance at his own statement and corrected, "Not permanently. I'll be back in three days."

"Then I'll go with you." His voice booked no room for argument, but he knew that would hardly matter where his older brother was concerned.

"No. You _won't_." Dean reached through the broken window, grabbed the old silver pin of the door lock and popped it up, opening the door. They probably shouldn't just stand around the car they were breaking into, waiting for the owner to return, even if it did look like no one had touched the poor vehicle in weeks. "You can't come on this one, Sam."

Sam clenched his jaw, hand fisted by his side. "If this is about what I said back at Dad's-"

"It's not," Dean interrupted swiftly, voice as hard as his brother had ever heard it. Sam didn't believe him for a second.

"Don't do this." His voice was low and foreboding, and Dean knew what he was saying. _Don't cut me out. Don't be dad_.

"I'm not. But I don't want you anywhere near the guy I'm going to see."

Sam had a feeling who it was, but didn't bother asking. That wasn't the point here. "If he's that dangerous, you're not going alone."

The man from the future made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, cursing his apparent inability to ever explain anything to his brother without somehow making the kid feel like he was being left behind due to lack of skill. "He's not dangerous. I mean, yeah, okay, he is – he can be – but not to me. Probably."

Yeah, he was really explaining this one real well.

Dean blew out a breath. "Look, I need you to trust me on this."

"Why?" His brother's abrupt, harsh response drew the hunter up short just as he'd been about to climb into the stolen vehicle. Sam was staring at him fiercely across the hood. "You keep asking me to trust you Dean – and I do – but you never trust me back."

The older man frowned, pulling his head back as he righted himself once more. "This isn't about not trusting you, Sam."

"Yes, it is. It always is with you!"

Dean rolled his eyes, irritation at the reoccurring argument that wasn't even relevant flaring up among all the other anger. He went to climb back into the car, not even bothering to answer.

"He was my dad too, Dean."

The man from the future froze, blood turning to ice. That…that wasn't below the belt, not really, not considering they'd _just_ lost their dad and here he was, taking off as well. But it still hurt. Dean swallowed, not quite able to look at his kid brother but also entirely unable to look away.

The world was empty between the two of them, silent and heavy and hollow.

Finally, Dean closed his eyes briefly. "Last time."

Sam's eyebrow climbed slowly, challenging.

"I swear."

"You sure you want to cash in that chip?" his brother asked coldly, and Dean winced. Yeah, Sam wasn't going to let him get away with this again.

He swallowed but nodded. "Last time. I'll be back in three days."

Sam knew a lost cause when he saw it, or maybe he was just deciding which battle to pick after all, because he eventually bit out, angrily, "Two. And you'd better be there."

Dean let the demand hang heavy in the air for a moment before he cleared his throat and nodded, throwing on a smile that almost didn't look as fake as it felt. "And what, leave fixing my Baby to you? Not in this timeline, or any other, bitch."

The pause before his brother's reply was duly noted and spoke volumes, but, then again, so did his eventual response. "Jerk."

Dean made to climb into the Pinto but stopped once more. He straightened back up, meeting Sammy's gaze across the car.

"You'll help me fix her up, this time. We'll do it together." It took Dean a lot more than he was willing to admit to keep his brother's gaze. "And while we do… I'll tell you everything."

The younger Winchester's jaw was clenched tight and was all but stone. "All of it?"

The man from the future hesitated for only a moment. Procrastination was Dean Winchester's go-to, but he knew this time his dues would come and he'd actually have to pay them. He wasn't even sure if he would be able to. But it didn't matter, not really. They'd reached the end of this road, and he had no doubt that Sam would leave – for good this time – if Dean didn't figure out how to start telling his brother the truth.

"All of it."

-o-o-o-

He was on his second drink of the morning, and it wasn't even ten o'clock yet. But the screen in front of him was disturbingly blank, his head disturbingly clear despite both the alcohol and the penchant for migraines that seemed to strike him on a weekly basis now, and his cell was blinking that little green light that meant he had voicemails from his publisher because no one else ever called him.

Chuck Shurley set down his glass of amber liquid, ice cubes clinking along the sides, and stared at the computer screen. He was… stuck wasn't the right word for it. He couldn't be stuck, he had deadlines. Not to mention, he'd never been stuck before. Sure, the story didn't ever seem to go where he thought it would – wanted it to, really – but anytime he hit that patch of writer's block, bam! On came a new idea and a fresh headache.

Only, no ideas, no headache.

The writer sat, blinking, in front of his blank laptop, at an absolute loss for what to do next. Were there other ways to cure writer's block than alcohol, insomnia, and quite possibly the slow but imminent liquefaction of his brain under immense pressure, pain, and light sensitivity?

Probably. Maybe he should google.

A heavy-handed knock on his front door interrupted him before he could, not that he was really all that likely too, not before drink number four if he was being real honest with himself, which he was frighteningly good at. The only thing he might actually be good at, he muttered as he climbed off the small desk chair and gave himself a cursory look-over.

He considered changing out of the striped bathrobe and boxers, but ultimately decided, whatever. His visitors totaled about as much as his callers. It was either his neighbor Phil – a practical joker who had an awful sense of humor – or his mean mail-lady who he had a bit of an ongoing feud with currently.

Either or, they'd both seen him in worse.

What Chuck Shurley was not expecting when he pulled open his front door that morning, was a young, good-looking guy wearing an angry expression and holding a glowing ball of light dangling from a black chord.

"Hey, _Chuck_."

Dean Winchester did not look happy, standing there lit by the blinding amulet, a sightless head adorned with cow horns currently glowing like a supernova, which his brother had given him fourteen years ago. Chuck remembered writing that scene.

"We need to talk."


	38. Season 2: Chapter 5

_**-Summary**_ _: Cas pulled his broken body over the grass-covered graves beneath them. The buried dead that he and Sam would soon be among. But Dean was alive and only a few feet away. Only a few feet and he could fix this. He would fix it. There was still time: time to send him back, time to make the other choice, time to choose a different road. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-God as Chuck**_ _: My head-cannon for Chuck is that God_ is _Chuck. He's not possessing a human, merely letting himself, as a cosmic being, sit on the backburner while he plays out life as a human. Sort of like acting out a role, but so method that most of the time he lets his character forget he's even acting to begin with._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings**_ _: Lots of chatter in this one, but hopefully interesting chatter, at the very least! Writing is still a bit rough, as I forced it through in my 'off' phase. It may also be rough typo-wise because I struggled a lot with editing it._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 5

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The smile slid right of Chuck's face the second the door opened. Expectancy gave way to shock and then immediately confusion, but Dean wasn't buying it for a second. He shoved the glowing amulet into his jean pocket (a second before he remembered the thing burned _hot_ in God's presence, but dammit, too late now) and regarded the disheveled deadbeat-God-turned-prophet-turned-writer with nothing less than vehemence.

Chuck tried to laugh it off – awkwardly at that – but any ploy he had at not owning up to Dean Winchester standing on his front porch with his right front pants pocket lit up like a friggin' Christmas tree was somewhat de-railed by the fact that the house started shaking.

The hunter had only a moment of _what the hell?_ before the rising pitch of a pissed off angel's true voice and the sudden brightening of the world around them clued him in. Oh. Right. Prophet meant archangel chained to his ass. Dean had sort of forgotten about that.

Chuck looked wary for all but a moment before his façade collapsed into something stern but resigned. "You're not supposed to be here yet."

With a wave of his hand, the world went quiet. The walls and floor stopped shaking. Dean's pocket stopped burning. The glass around them – windows and car windshields, cups inside the house, and what the neighbor probably called 'yard decorations' but freaked Dean the fuck out more than any monster (civilians, man. Nothing more terrifying) – stopped vibrating, soon to shatter from the high pitch ring of an angelic temper tantrum. The world sort of went grey around the edges in a way that made Dean blink heavily, then shake his head when that didn't clear his vision. It didn't clear up, and now that he noticed it, the sound around them seemed oddly muted. Like listening to the world through a tub of water.

Chuck sighed and pulled the door open all the way, stepping to the side with a beckoning gesture. Dean, with a finger stuck in his ear trying to make them pop or something, took a step forward and immediately spun at the movement just out of peripheral range.

The hunter stared, wide eyed, at a double of himself, having an animated talk with a second Chuck. He glanced between the two bickering, a grey film over the entire image just like the rest of the world, and back to the much clearer, unmuted version of God standing next to him.

"Just a little distraction," Chuck supplied with an offhanded shrug. He watches his double – what Dean was starting to realize was like one of Gabriel's constructs (like Father like son?) – for a moment before he turned away. "Raphael won't interfere now."

Dean glanced skyward for a moment, but it looked like the archangel had gone silent. There was no doubt in the hunter's mind that Chuck had conveniently ended that tantrum with his 'son' none-the-wiser.

"You mean he won't know his deadbeat dad's been right under his nose all this time, ignoring every damn, desperate prayer sent his way?"

Well, he had come to have words, and never let it be said that Dean Winchester beat around the bush.

…Okay, at least let it be said he didn't do that around anyone other than Sam.

Chuck sighed again, running a hand through his hair and scratched at his beard. He seemed world-weary in a way the prophet had only ever seemed depressed and unhygienic. "You shouldn't be here, Dean. Not yet."

He didn't sound angry, just defeated. Like he'd full-well expected one, Dean Winchester, would show up to mess up his afternoon plans of alcohol, wallowing, and crappy writing one of these days, he had just hoped it wouldn't be _this_ day.

Dean had never really understood that line between 'Chuck' and God.

The hunter, rebuke on his tongue, found the words stuck in his throat as God's eyes dropped to his chest and his face, stripped of reservation, turned so damn mournful it was breathtaking. Dean blinked, anger momentarily distracted, as God stepped towards him, hand outstretched towards his chest. Dean fought the immediate urge to take a step back, suddenly uncomfortable for so many reasons. Chuck didn't stop, nor did he ask, but he did glance at the Righteous Man and pause long enough to give him plenty of time to protest.

While Dean was still trying to figure out what he'd even say if he were to protest – which, yes, of course he was going to fucking protest – Chuck pressed his splayed out palm to Dean's chest and the next thing the hunter knew, he was struggling to remember how to expand his chest to suck air into his lungs against the onslaught, both physical and mental. It was like watching the last ten years of his life as a movie, only on rapid six-friggin-arrow, fast-forward mode. You know the one, where you've seen the movie before so even though you're just catching a single frame every tenth minute of the film, you still know absolutely everything that's happening in between.

Chuck was, apparently, 'catching up'.

Meanwhile, his chest flared at the sudden contact of primordial being of limitless power and, _oh yeah_ , Castiel's fucking father. He couldn't tell if the pounding beneath his ribcage was his suddenly frenzied heart having a friggin' panic attack, Castiel's undeniable rage and upset that flooded every bit of his already angry-buzzed body, or the equally tragic longing that made Dean feel like his lungs apparently wanted to burst out of his chest Alien-style to give God a hug-and-or-possibly-strangle-him-to-death.

Had he mentioned he had no idea what was going on in his sternum but he was fairly sure he wasn't alone in there and it was all kinda weird and less than comfortable for the very human-is-safe-everything-else-is-questionable hunter?

"Oh, Castiel," Chuck breathed out, a heartbroken look unabashedly spread across his ancient eyes.

Dean sucked in a breath, not realizing he apparently hadn't tried breathing in a while because he almost choked on it and ended up coughing and staggering away from God's hand, finally severing the connection. His chest immediately flagged, heart calming and warmth and anger fading back to normal-Dean levels.

"Holy shit," he wheezed out, pressing his hand to his suddenly cold, bereft sternum. "What the hell?"

Chuck had the grace (ha!) to look at least remorseful of the state Dean found himself in, but honestly the hunter didn't care about that. Sure, he was pissed and the whole habit Heaven had of getting all-up-and-personal with humans without some fucking warning was ridiculous. But that wasn't what his brain was catching on as he stared at the weird mix of sorrow and pride – and slight apology – on God's face.

"He's…" Dean swallowed, realizing he was about to get one of the many answers he'd come here for. Honestly, he'd been prepared to get none, piss off God, and find himself back in 2016, dying alongside his brother and the rest of the world. To realize that might not actually happen – or at least it might not happen _yet_ – shut his mouth as much as it did his brain and he definitely struggled to get both going again. The warmth in his chest friggin _wiggled_ , like it was elbowing him in the ribs, and he realized how stupid he suddenly was. He already knew the damn answer to this question. He'd only come here looking for someone else to say it that wasn't a demon. "He's in there?"

God slid his hands smoothly into the pockets of his bathrobe in a move that would have been nothing but awkward on Chuck. The difference and yet similarity between the two was distracting. He looked up at Dean, a good couple of inches of difference in their heights. "Just a sliver. Probably meant to burn up on re-entry. Honestly, I'm surprised it didn't."

"What?" Dean blinked, only picking up half the words coming out of the primordial being's mouth. "What the hell does that mean?"

Chuck shrugged, demeanor relaxing back into almost-human-Chuck as he drifted into the house in search of a drink. "Human souls weren't really built for integration."

He headed into the kitchen, answering Dean's question without answering anything at all. God grabbed a couple of beers out of the fridge, pulling one free of the plastic ring and tossing it to Dean, who caught it with the kind of force that suggested he was considering hurling it back at the guy's face.

Chuck didn't seem to notice. "Actually, nothing about the human body is great at integration. It was the best defense I could give against disease. Sucks for organ transplants. Though, to be fair, I wasn't really thinking that far in advance when I was going through the first draft."

Dean still didn't know what God was shuffling on about, but he supposed it didn't even matter. He had is answer. "Is that why I keep seeing him in dreams? And the…"

The hunter trailed off, unsure how to phrase it and even less willing to remember it. He mimicked an explosion one hand and a beer, a grimace on his face, and a muttered something about Azazel.

"Oh, yeah, definitely," God confirmed, way too calmly as he popped the beer with a light spray. "Probably did that in self-defense, I imagine. No way he'd have put you in that much danger on purpose." He shrugged again, raising the beer to his lips and taking a swig. "He took quite a beating from it, so you may not see him for a while."

It took a moment for God to notice, but when he did, Dean didn't actually have to say anything. The very blatant look on his face that said ' _I'm going to start punching if you don't make sense here soon'_ was obvious enough. Chuck cleared his throat, a move so reminiscent of Chuck that Dean struggled for yet another moment to separate the two. It ended as quickly as that face adopting a vaguely amused expression at the utterly empty threat, though he did start talking straight at least.

"That sliver is just a shadow, Dean." The hunter frowned at the wording, something familiar sparking in his mind but he didn't remember what that was. "Not much at all, really. If I had to guess, I'd say Castiel – your Castiel, of 2016 – used up what grace he had to get you back here, and whatever was left after he saw you through the trip got a bit…clingy?"

There was something he clearly found utterly entertaining about that, if the sly, slightly smug, and infuriating amusement in his eyes was anything to go by. Dean had no clue what about this could possibly be funny, but he knew he was damn close to slapping that look of God's face, even if it broke every bone in his hand.

Chuck cleared his throat again and chugged the last of his beer distractedly. "That explosion wiped out any energy he'd manage to store up. But he'll be back."

Something deep inside the hunter shook loose at that, and he felt like he could finally breathe, something he hadn't been able to do properly since that damn cabin and the thought of charcoal wings spread across dilapidated wood walls. The rest of him stayed tense, though, because he hadn't come here just to ask about his homemade angelic chest bomb.

Cas was going to be alright. More to the point, he was fucking _here_ and Dean knew it now. Now on to those who fucking weren't and never would be again.

"And my dad?"

Chuck suddenly gave the very distinct impression of tilting his head to the side despite the fact that his neck didn't move an inch. "John?"

Dean grit his teeth hard enough to hear them squeak against one another, returning to his previous pissed-beyond-words state of natural being as he stared down a friggin' all-knowing cosmic being who apparently needed shit spelled out for him. "He's dead."

Confusion flickered through ancient eyes for an infinitesimal fraction of a second before understanding dawned and then something so dangerously close to pity took over that Dean almost punched him right then and there.

"Dean-"

"Don't you fucking 'Dean' me! You know why I'm here. Why Cas sent me back."

"To change things," Chuck answered with as close to a verbal shrug as anyone on the planet had ever achieved. Dean's hands curled into fists and he had to remind himself, several times, that punching _God_ was not a good idea.

He threw his arms out to the side, taking it out on the innocent air around him instead. "I'm not changing a goddamn thing!"

The cosmic deity gave him a single, admonishing look for the choice of words. "You are."

"I'm really not." The words were low and dangerous, growled through clenched teeth and zero remaining patience.

Chuck signed. "John's death is unfortunate, but inevit-"

"I swear if you say inevitable I will find a way to kill you."

God looked almost fondly exasperated again, and Dean's inability to anger the guy was only raising his own levels of frustration. "If you don't like that word choice, let's try another: necessary."

"So what, it's destiny? My father dying just _had_ to happen, some things just _have_ to stay the same?"

"Yes and no," Chuck replied and Dean just stared him down until he continue. It was all he could do, because any alternative was certainly going to involve violence. "Think of it like a game of Chess. For every move you make, your opponent gets a chance to counter. You throw a ball into a pool, the water has to go somewhere. For every push you make, time will push back, or push somewhere else."

"A balance?" Dean asked, though the tone suggested he wasn't exactly being sincere.

"Yes and no."

"You better cut that shit out before I find a way to hurt you."

God's eyes were back to that fond exasperation thing and Dean tightened his fist. "Yes, to some extent, Time is a balance. Every up has a down, Ying has a Yang, so on and so on. It's going to try and stay the same. But also no. If you push too hard…"

"It'll break."

God nodded readily. "Snap like a toothpick. There goes your balance. You don't want that to happen, Dean. We're talking unpredictability like you can't even imagine. Take everything you know about what you think is coming and throw it out the window. You really don't want to see what that looks like. You're dad living past this point?" He held out his hand as he settled against the counter once more, palm flat and parallel to the ground before he tipped his hand. "There goes your balance."

"That's bullshit," Dean ground out. "He's one man! You telling me 'destiny' is balanced on one friggin' guy?"

"One guy who fathered the true vessels." His counter claim was calm, and Dean's jaw clacking shut was audible. "You and Sam are important, and leaning on each other, depending on each other alone, because you're all you've got left… Hard as that is, it's what's going to get you through what comes next."

The hunter stood in God's kitchen, trembling, from rage and grief and pain and all of it, because damn it, that didn't sound wrong. It didn't sound fucking fair, either, but it didn't sound wrong. He and Sam had always managed better when they were together, and John just didn't factor into the picture well. Never had.

"You're going to have to play the game, Dean, whether you like it or not. A very careful game of push and pull; toe the edge but don't go over; decide what pieces you can't afford to lose, and know you're going to sacrifice some others."

"Pick our battles, huh?" the hunter asked bitterly, shaking his head.

"Sam always was a smart one," Chuck responded with a wry smile, eyes sliding into the other room where his computer sat, open, the Winchester Gospels still crisp and fresh across the screen. "Time is fluid, Dean, but it doesn't flow like either of you think it does. And what you're trying to do, you can't do without some give."

"I'm not here for a philosophical lecture." The fact that he refused to accept that lecture, from God or Sam or Cas, was another matter entirely.

"Well, you're here for something," Chuck offered unhelpfully, the first hints of annoyance creeping into his words. "So I'll keep talking and maybe eventually I'll say something you will listen to."

His body language never lost an inch of the relaxed, Jeff-Bridges-as-the-Dude-ness, but there was a bit of a warning in his voice now that told the meager human he was getting close to a line. Dean managed to bite his tongue, though every fiber of his being was telling him not to give a damn. It was only Sam's quiet, pleading voice in his head that kept him from pushing Chuck harder than he already was.

' _I can't do this alone, Dean._ '

God could send him back. He'd come here knowing the potential his frustration and hotheadedness was risking. So, he supposed, until Chuck said something he really couldn't take, that he could reign that rage in enough to at least let him say what he had to say.

Dean had only ninety percent come to yell at him. The other ten percent was for answers, which he'd only get if he actually listened. He wasn't happy about it.

"Time isn't a linear thing," Chuck continued, popping a second beer. "It exists, simultaneously, in every corner of the universe, all the – 'scuse the pun – time. You change something, and it updates, all at once, across the board."

Dean breathed through his nose, already walking back his commitment to not throwing a punch. It took several ten-counts, something Sam had once made him start doing to manage his anger that really didn't fucking work and he'd remember to tell the boy scout whenever this Sam got around to the subject, before he was able to grind out, "What do you mean?"

Chuck considered for a moment before spreading his hands out, gesturing with them and the open bear, as he explained, "Take Palo Alto. The first time you lived through this, there were demonic omens a week before Jess's death, weren't there? Your dad told you about them."

The man from the future stumbled over the question for a moment. It seemed so non-sequitur to their conversation, and so much had happened in the last six months that honestly, he'd sort of forgotten how this had all started. Not to mention he pretty much had two sets of memories he had to reconcile now anytime he compared first-time-then to second-time-then.

He cracked the yet-untouched beer in his hand open and took a chug. God, his life sucked.

"This time, no omens." Chuck apparently didn't need him to answer, as he continued right on, not even casting the sudden beer chug anything more than an understanding, cursory glance. He set his own can on the counter beside him, crossing his arms over his chest. "But you only showed up a day or two before Jess was supposed to die."

Despite having just drank half a beer, Dean was pretty sure his mouth had never been drier. He wasn't sure if it was the casual way God said Jess's death was _supposed_ to happen, or maybe just the nonchalant acceptance that it hadn't happened, but Dean was back to having breathing difficulties.

The hunter had expected God to have a problem with the fact that they were trying for a reset. That Dean was basically _cheating_ by coming back to the past to change it all. He'd been ready to argue, tooth and nail, for his right to be here. But, like with all things – and Dean couldn't even believe he'd spent energy worrying about it – God just didn't care.

"You see what I'm saying?" Chuck asked, and no, Dean really, really didn't. "If time was linear, there would have been demonic signs the last week in October. You would have shown up November first, and Jess wouldn't have died by November second due to your presence."

The way he talked about it almost reminded Dean of Sam when he was geeking out about something nerdy. It was the most interested in anything he'd ever seen God get. It only pissed him off more.

"But Time isn't linear. It knew you were coming, knew your presence meant Jess wouldn't die that night, and so no demonic omens occurred. Time updated all at once, across the board." Chuck finished with a wry grin, swiping his beer back off the counter as he stood up. "Don't you get it, Dean? You think you can't change anything, but you already _did_."

Dean's brain stuttered a full ten seconds after Chuck wrapped up his little lecture, all but smiling up at the hunter who sat there, stunned. Wait, _what_?

"Are you saying…" The man from the future shook his head. "Then what the hell comes next? Is the Apocalypse…?"

God looked slightly apologetic and harried at the question, but his relaxed posture remained the same as he admitted, half sheepish, half nonchalant, "I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?" There was that anger again. He might as well grow a vagina for all of this emotional roller-coastering he was doing. God, no wonder women were so pissed off during their periods. "You're an all-knowing _god_ , how can you _not know_?"

Chuck just shrugged. "I don't want to know, Dean. I'm all-knowing if I want to be, and I don't _want_ to be. Plus, time is constantly updating. It's dizzying to try and keep track." At the intimidating level of angry red, sort-of-turning-purple that was blossoming across Dean's face, he tossed his hands up a bit, a little more human-Chuck showing through. "Why do you think I'm down here, living out life as a human?"

"I don't know," the hunter ground out, "maybe because you're a damn coward and a piece of work too fucking scared to face his own kids and deal with the mess _he_ created."

Chuck sobered momentarily, a look of something dark and dangerous and old filtering across his face with such severity that Dean very quickly remembered just who it was he was talking to. Bits and pieces of that wrathful Father from the Old Testament filtered through his brain.

 _Too little too late on that one, buddy_ , he mumbled internally.

Luckily for him, 'God' had gone the way of the hipsters in the last century. All peace and Zen, apparently, and he quickly resumed his expression of fond, if not thinning, exasperation.

"I'm not hiding, Dean. If I was, I certainly wouldn't have picked a prophet as my hiding spot, smack dab in the middle of this mess and tied to one of my own children." Blue eyes darted up to the ceiling pointedly. "This isn't going to be an easy for you to hear – believe me, I know – but I am helping as much as I can."

"Helping?" the hunter roared, taking a step forward that brought him dangerously within Chuck's personal space. "My dad is _dead!_ More people are going to die, and you're just sitting here, writing our crappy lives for entertainment!"

Chuck rubbed at his forehead, his elbow almost brushing against the imposing hunter with how close he was. But God didn't seem to take notice. "Look… I'm not the writer of all things, and I don't decide what happens. Could I? Sure, but I tried that for a while and it didn't work out so well."

Dean didn't speak. His lip twitched angrily and his hands remained fisted at his sides. Chuck tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling and, hell, maybe at the kid hanging out above the house watching some illusion of a prophet go about his day.

"When I first started all of this… Yes, I wanted you – humanity – to know who I was. It was ego, plain and simple. I wanted my creations to love me, so I made myself a fixture in your lives. Laid down some rules, answered prayers, smiled down from on high and fixed it when it needed fixing. The whole lot. But look where that got me?" He lowered his head to take in the Righteous Man with a small, self-deprecating smile. "I gave you guys free will, something I missed on the angels, and there you all were, barely using it. It was all 'God, grant me this' and 'please, fix that'. I couldn't hold your hands forever. Eventually you had to leave the nest, start making your own decisions.

"What's that saying the Western world is so fond of? I'm just a kid with an ant farm?" Chuck tossed his hands out to the side, a sort of _'well…yeah'_ gesture. "They're not wrong, you know. The sentiment and connotation aren't great, sure, but the analogy's pretty on point."

Dean ground his teeth together. "You're really going to stand there, again, and tell me you don't care?"

Chuck let out an aggravated sound and pinched the bridge of his nose. Such a human thing to do. "No, that's not… Why do you get an ant farm, Dean?" When the hunter didn't answer, he threw out his arms emphatically. "To watch the ants! You don't get an ant farm so you can tell those little guys what tunnels to dig, where to put the dirt, how many rocks to move. You get an ant farm so you can watch them do incredible things!

"You guys, the human race, has _such_ potential. Who am I, as a parent, to stand in the way of that? To curtail it by hovering, protecting, or solving all your problems for you? So, yeah, I stepped back. Sure, it took a few centuries for you to find yourself, and it got ugly a couple times there. But you came through. And you've grown so much more than I could have ever dreamed. Done amazing things."

Dean was shaking his head, hand raised and he just needed God – Chuck – to stop talking. "What does all this have to do with what's happening _now_? Heaven and Hell are going to start the friggin' end of the world, and you're going to let them!"

Chuck's face turned back to that slightly apologetic, little bit sheepish, but mostly nonchalant expression that Dean had been working so hard not to slap. "It's the angels' turn to be kicked out of the nest."

"What?"

"I started with you guys first. You have free will, a rebellious nature; kicking you out of the house was always going to go better than my older kids." Chuck shrugged guiltily. "Now it's their turn."

"This…" Dean almost couldn't speak, the anger and frustration and downright disbelief boiled in his blood and flooded his throat, stalling his tongue. "You're telling me this is all some sort of…lesson? For the angels? Half the humans on this friggin' planet are going to die, and it's a god damn _lesson?_ "

"They're…not taking it very well."

"Are you _kidding me_?!"

"Dean-"

"No. No fucking way. You are going to go back to your messed up family and you are going to end this." Dean jabbed his finger into God's chest, and the celestial being allowed his body to be pushed back against the counter. "This is not my damn mess to clean up. Me and my family have done enough. We've bled enough. You. Fix. This. Now."

"Enough." The reverberating command rang through the house hard enough to vibrate the walls and shake the furniture. Dean stumbled back, blown away from the god as he straightened, finally having enough. The power flowing off of him ebbed almost immediately, leaving Chuck once more. "I know you don't understand, Dean. You don't have to believe me and you don't have to have faith in me, but I am doing everything I can for my family."

"Bullshit." Fear thrummed through Dean's veins, survival instinct screaming through every synapses to shut the hell up, but it just wasn't in his nature. Screw the consequences.

Chuck huffed a frustrated little sound, but he remained just Chuck. "I can't step in now. Imagine if 'God' suddenly came back to humanity, solved all your problems, created world peace, and then left again. You have _nukes_ now. You'd never survive."

"Then here's an idea, _don't leave_." Dean's own daddy issues aside, was it so much to ask of a fucking father to take care of his damn children?

"But I'm going to." Chucks voice softened. "One day, I won't be here anymore, Dean. Death – or something else – will reap me, and then what? I'm a father; it's my job to prepare my kids for a world that I'm not in, and I'm trying to do that while I'm still around to help them through it."

He sighed, and the sound was rough, even for a god. "I walked away from the angels, and they're just starting to figure out I'm not coming back. If I step in and solve it now… when the time comes that I'm gone for good, they _will_ end the world, and I won't be there to save it. At least this way, I can stick around and keep it from being a total disaster while they… figure it out."

"A total disaster? Thousands of people are going to die!"

"In a hunt, can you save everyone, Dean?"

The man from the future reeled back at that question like a punch to the face. That- that was not fucking fair.

"That's one, maybe two people, and I feel like crap when it happens!" he shot back. "You're talking half the planet!"

"That's something you and I can never see on the same level," God answered calmly. "You're one man, I'm God. I'm not saying it with arrogance, or that you're too small to understand. I'm _not_ , Dean. But our worlds are never going to make sense to one another.

"I get that not being able to save everyone hurts you." Chuck smiled up at him briefly, despite the rage and anger and distrust facing him back. "You're good and righteous, and I'm proud of you. Everyone you can't save tears at you, and you'll never stop being that man. It tears at me too. We just see it from different perspectives."

Dean was already shaking his head, but God just kept on going, not letting the hunter argue. "This is the best that it can be. I know you don't understand or trust me, but this is everything I can do to save the world _I_ created."

"And what? We're supposed to be thankful?"

Chuck closed his eyes briefly, patience thinning. "No. It's not that kind of help."

The god, in his boxers and bathrobe, beer in hand, pushed off the counter, setting the can down as he did so. "And you won't be very thankful about this either, but trust me. It's for the best."

"What is-" Dean took a step back as the words left his mouth, Chuck already in his personal space with a single step, a mistake on his part by crowding the God in his anger and frustration. Fingers were pressed to his forehead before he could so much as swat them away.

"Go back to your brother; he needs you. And you need him." Those blue eyes bore into his, ancient and old and yet still somehow Chuck beneath all of that. Wrinkles formed at the corners as God offered him nothing short of a fatherly smile. "For what it's worth, Dean, I believe in you."

Then the world went white.

-o-o-o-

Dean sat in his stolen Ford Pinto, staring out the windshield at Bobby's dusty house, parked in the salvage yard, and wondered how he got there. He had just been doing something, but he couldn't remember what. His talk with God had been a bust – bastard still wasn't going to lift a finger – but there'd been something else he had been doing.

He'd been going home? Home to Sam. Green eyes darted back through the windshield to the dusty house beyond, and Dean couldn't help the smile that pulled at his lips. _Home_.

But there had definitely been something else…

The hunter turned his head to the right, taking in the brown grocery bag sitting passenger side, filled pretty much to the top with stuff and emitting the happy, wonderful, world-redeeming scent of pie. Right, he'd stopped and picked up some groceries and supplies for Plan…well, he supposed it was Plan G now, since Plan F(uck it) had gone belly up. Although, if he really thought about it, this was Plan C, and he was just running the plans out of order.

Fuck Plan F, Plan C was where it was at.

With a slight grin, brought on by equal parts pie, being _home_ , and the new determination swelling up within him (centralized as a deep warmth just behind his sternum that he couldn't help but rub at), Dean grabbed the bag with one arm and pushed open the door of his stolen vehicle with the other. As he climbed out, groceries shoved against his side, he didn't notice the small wooden box tumble out from the top of the slightly squished, dangerously tilting bag. It bounced off the seat, hit the ground, and rolled up under the footwell where it lay just out of sight. The hand-carved, Aquarian star across its top was masked entirely by the shadows cast by the dashboard of the stolen vehicle.

He slammed the car door shut, hefted the bag, and started for the house. He pushed thoughts of his failed meeting with God to the back of his mind – God damn Gods – and didn't think much of the fact that he couldn't quite recall the face of the not-man he'd just come back from meeting, or most of the meeting itself. Nor would he ever notice that the next time he thought of Chuck Shurley, he thought of the nerdy, slightly pathetic, alcoholic prophet stuck writing his crappy Winchester Gospels with an archangel tied to his ass, and nothing more.

Dean was whistling happily by the time he pulled open the screen door to Bobby's house, Plan C in hand, surrogate father and brother waiting for him inside, and the smell of pie wafting up from the bag to fill his nostrils and, let's be honest, his soul.

The apocalypse didn't stand a chance against a Dean Winchester armed with family, hope, and _pie._

-o-o-o-

Chuck sat back in his old, squeaky writing chair, staring at the computer as his fingers stilled on the keys. He was Chuck Shurley for only a moment longer before something far older took over his body and God groaned, bodily leaning forward and hitting his forehead to the sturdy surface of the desk. The resounding thunk was cathartic, but not nearly enough so.

You try to do something nice for the Winchesters.

Seriously!

It was like moving molasses. In the winter.

God picked his head off of the desk, staring at the words blinking back at him from the open document on Chuck's laptop. The blurb that described a little wooden box that shouldn't even exist in this timeline, sitting – useless – in the footwell of some stolen vehicle he just knew Dean wasn't going to revisit anytime soon.

Molasses. In the winter. In _Antartica,_ for crying out loud!

He let out another groan and slammed the lid of the laptop shut. He needed a drink.

God damn Winchesters.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns:**_ _If you're not sure what the box is, google it because you'll be very excited. At least until you get as frustrated as Chuck when you realize Dean's already lost it. I'm such an evil_ (read: no good, dirty, rotten) _author_


	39. Season 2: Chapter 6

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings** : Time to catch back up on Sammy's progress the last two days! Uh, Actual Warnings: this chapter ain't pretty, folks. There be angst ahead. Heads up for trigger warnings; descriptions of withdrawal and fever dreams. Dark descriptions of blood drinking, death, and misery all wrapped up in a package of suicidal thoughts. It's not as bad as it sounds, Sam'll be fiiiiiine._

 _- **Actual Actual Chapter Warnings** : okay, but no, seriously, this chapter goes very dark places, so please proceed with caution._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 6

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam made it back to Souix Falls in a little under twelve hours. He'd hit some nasty traffic through Chicago, which canceled out all the backroad, side route knowledge that usually made hunters so much faster than the average map user. It had given him plenty of time to oscillate between anger and the far lesser form of annoyance his brother was currently incurring within him.

Dean had never been the sharing kind, particularly when he was grieving or guilt-laden, but Sam hadn't expected him to _leave_.

 _Like father like son_.

He immediately winced at the thought and resolved not to think such a cruel thing again. Especially now. The reasonable part of his brain, the part untouched by overwhelming emotion, the part that would have made such a good lawyer, knew Dean was probably trying. Or at least, his version of trying. Granted he sucked at it and Sam was fast approaching his limit of how much he could take of his brother's overprotectiveness, emotional constipation, and trust issues. Even with the conciliatory agreement to finally, finally come completely clean, Sam was still angry and irritable and definitely getting the short end of the stick, hand over hand. There wasn't going to be much left of the damn thing when all was said and done, and Dean would be a lucky son of a bitch if Sam didn't beat him with it in the end.

But he'd almost died. Dean had almost died in that hospital. Every time Sam got too angry, too worked up, a little voice in his head reminded him that he'd almost lost him altogether. The last family he had in this world. Then his mind would revert back to being just annoyed, coupled with the grief of loss and fear of the future. At least until he inevitably talked himself back into a fury.

He put the truck into park along the salvage yard's drive, grabbing his gear from the otherwise empty passenger seat, and tried not to feel the newest whirlwind of emotions at the fact that his brother wasn't sitting next to him. Anger, hurt, annoyance, loss, sorrow, worry, dread, more anger, and over all of it a thick, heavy film of bone-deep exhaustion.

Bobby was waiting for him at the screen door, a raised brow at the lack of a second brother, to which Sam grumpily muttered something in return that at least put the old hunter off his questioning for now. The younger Winchester really didn't feel like talking about it anyhow. He trekked his way upstairs with his go-bag and his dad's too. He'd have to sort through it, keep any of the useful stuff and…. He didn't know what he'd do with the rest. A decision that should have been made together, if Dean hadn't gone off who-knows-where.

Selfish, self-centered, ignoramus, unthinking, martyring, asshole. That's what his brother was. And stubborn.

And also not dead.

Sam collapsed onto the bed after he'd dropped both duffels without much care. Without much anything, really. He was tired. Emotionally drained, tired of feeling so damn much all the time. Physically drained too. His bones felt heavy, his muscles ached, and his veins were hollow in a way that was fiercely uncomfortable, but he had no idea how to address.

No. That wasn't true.

Sam rolled onto his side, tucking a hand beneath his head as he stared at the second twin bed where Dean usually slept. He knew exactly what would make his body stop hurting. Knew what he could fill his veins with to make them sing instead of scream.

The hunter closed his eyes tightly against the gnawing hole in the pit of his stomach that had been growing since they'd left that cabin. When he'd first been cleared by the hospital staff, he wrote it off as hunger and ignored it in favor of finding his father and making sure his brother would make it through the night. When he'd finally sought out food, it had done nothing for that growing pit, and he'd decided it was because of Dean's condition.

It hadn't gone away once Dean woke up, perfectly fine.

He could say it was because of his father; he'd gotten his brother back only to lose his dad. But Sam knew that wasn't it. The other symptoms were too obvious to assign to his grief. The slight tremor in his hands. The insomnia and exhaustion that weighed him down with every step and every blink. The dry itchiness in his eyes and the tingle at the tips of every finger, the ends of every limb.

Withdrawal. He'd walked Brady through it enough times to recognize the signs. It also meant he knew exactly what stage he was at and the bad news was it was going to get much, much worse.

Sam rolled onto his back and opened his eyes to the ceiling above him. There was a water-stain just over his head. He and Dean had patched that for Bobby when they were teens, staying here on one of John's numerous hunts deemed too dangerous for them. There'd been a storm, and Sam woke up in the middle of the night to the drip drip drip of a quickly dampening bed.

Dean made at least three wet-the-bed jokes even as he scooted over on the small mattress and begrudgingly beckoned the even-then giant of a human into his bed. It hadn't been the comfiest of nights, but at least it was dry. Looking back on it, Sam wondered why one of them hadn't just taken the couch downstairs. Probably because they'd been sharing beds since they were toddlers and neither had grown up with a whole lot of personal space between them.

The next morning, seeing clear skies and a beautiful sunny day, they'd rummaged Bobby's library for a book on roof repair and got to work that afternoon. When they'd climbed down that evening, Bobby gifted them with beers and a solid waggle of his finger that he best not be hearing from John about it. Sam had tried a sip, gagged at the rough taste, and promptly given the can to Dean, enjoying a soda for the rest of the evening instead.

The young hunter turned away from that water stain and the happy childhood memory – one of the few he had. Dean wasn't here right now and he had bigger worries on the horizon than a night spent under a leaky roof.

-o-o-o-

He woke up shaking. It was the middle of the night, the room around him dark and empty. His muscles ached in a way they hadn't when he'd gone to sleep. Sam groaned, curling into a miserable ball beneath the blankets that weren't nearly enough warmth or weight.

Hours passed in shivering misery. Halfway through what was left of the early morning, Sam gave up fighting the cold that racked his body yet left him sweating, and stumbled from his bed long enough to grab the blankets from Dean's empty mattress. Muscles protested the sudden use, aching in such a way that suggested they were near cramping and his joints felt creaky and old beneath the weight of his large figure. He snagged the comforter with one hand and curled back up in a cocoon of fabric and wretchedness.

This was going far worse than he'd foolishly hoped.

-o-o-o-

Bobby came into the room in the early afternoon hours of the next day, probably to investigate why he hadn't come down for breakfast or lunch. The hunter didn't seem very surprised to find a sick Winchester curled in a mount of blankets, shaking and blinking at him from sunken eyes ringed by blue-black circles more befitting of a skull than a living thing. If the gruff old hunter thought it was a cold or something more (Sam was fairly certain Dean had told him about the demon blood), he was as unreadable as stone.

"You've both been going hard for weeks now," he reasoned as he dug another blanket – a thicker one, meant for the winter months. Karen had quilted shortly after their marriage, and Bobby hadn't touched it since her death, though the boys dug it out now and then through the years. She would have liked that, knowing he had kids who curled up beneath it during storms, spilled popcorn and soda on it through movie nights, and built forts and tents during long, hot days. "Not surprised your body finally called it."

He didn't need to mention that they'd also just lost their daddy. Falling victim to a cold was the least of the funny things grief could do to people.

Sam took the heavier blanket with greedy, shaking fingers and a weak thank you passed through chapped lips and a raspy throat. Bobby gave him a sympathetic look. Whatever this was had hit hard and fast. He left the kid to sleep it off as much as possible. An hour later he came back up with a cup of soup, a handful of crackers, and some juice he'd picked up on a run to the store.

When he came up the following morning with something equally light for breakfast, the food was untouched. The glass of cranberry juice, at least, was empty.

-o-o-o-

Sam desperately wished for his brother. He needed his brother.

There were only two times in his life he could remember being sick without Dean there to take care of him. To mother hen him way past the point of being ridiculous, actually. His older brother didn't do things in halves, that was for sure.

The first time was his freshman year at Stanford, barely a month into classes. He'd never spent so long on his own before. He was still finding his footing and hesitant to make friends, despite his eagerness too. Sam was good at making friends, but his unique childhood meant years of conditioning not to get close to people. He would always lose them to the next hunt, the next move. It was a lesson that had taken him far too long to learn, and one he'd made damn sure he wouldn't forget easily.

It meant that a month into college, he'd barely spoken to anyone for any meaningful amount of time. People there were great – amazing actually. For the first time in his life, Sam fit in somewhere. And not just because most everyone around was intelligent, eager, and striving for success in ways his family never would have defined the word. No, for the first time in his life, he was away from his family, away from the life and not going back. It was bittersweet, but it was the thing that made his new life feel so right.

Sam spent a week and a half curled in a ball in a shared dorm, miserable and weepy with fluids leaking from more places than he knew possible, wishing for his brother with everything that he was. He even thought how stupid he'd been to leave. To have gone out on his own, to face the world when he'd never managed it before and had almost no experience doing so. Eventually, his roommate – a fresh-faced, wide-eyed jackass with perfect teeth who had barely exchanged more than three full sentences with Sam – dragged him down to the parking lot, shoved him in his fancy car, and drove him to Urgent Care. Sam had managed to contract strep slapped atop a chest cold that was well on its way to bronchitis, all in his third week of school. The doctors pumped him full of drugs and tissues, handed him back to Brady, and the two had been best friends that day forward.

The second time had only been a couple of months before Dean came to fetch him in his search for Dad. That time Jess had been there to take care of him. Despite her choice of Halloween costume later that year, she actually had a terrible bedside manner. It had been a good running joke for those months after and, quite possibly, the motivation behind her sexy nurse outfit that October. Sure, she had taken care of him, but it had been so much more of a nurse Ratchet than a nurse Betty. Strong-arming him back to bed, telling him to stop being a baby and drink the damn soup, to get over it already, it was just pneumonia for Pete's sake.

She would have made a terrifying mother.

 _Will_ , Sam corrected. _She will make a terrifying mother, one day._

Just not to his kids.

The young hunter shook his head, groaning at the splitting headache behind his eyes, threatening to burst through every orifice of his face with every movement. He pushed everything, including the pain, to the side, and forced himself to think happy thoughts.

Her bedside manner had actually reminded him of his brother, really. He'd never told Jess that – he didn't talk about his family before Dean tripped into their life in the middle of the night in the middle of their apartment – but he was fairly convinced it had actually helped get him better faster.

Nothing like a little Winchester tough love, after all.

All that had been missing was the hovering, over-protective, and more than slightly co-dependent helicopter parenting. Which was essentially what he spent weeks teasing her about afterward.

What Sam wouldn't give for a little of that here. It would suck to have Dean in this room with him, no doubt about it. The non-stop fussing and all the worry. The desperation and disappointment in his eyes. The pity as he looked on and watched Sam suffer a sickness of his own making. The slight anger just under the surface that he would refuse to address until it boiled over entirely and ended up with Mt. Vesuvius level fallout, usually losing the high ground and probably Sam's only saving grace.

He'd give anything in the world not to see Dean look at him like that, to see him like this. But he'd give more just to have him there.

-o-o-o-

Bobby knew it wasn't the damn flu.

He may not be some intellectual or academic, he may not have a degree or fancy letters after his name, but he knew those boys and he was no idiot. Dean hadn't warned him in so many words that this might happen, but he'd been worried enough about it that Bobby had picked up on the general concern.

But gee, it sure would be nice to have someone around right about now who knew about the fallout of blood addiction. Someone who was (and this was just spit-balling, here) conveniently from the future, perfectly suited to deal with withdrawal, knew the symptoms and risks, and also happened to be (oh, let's say…) related to the poor kid suffering alone upstairs.

Too bad Bobby didn't have anyone like _that_ around to help.

Damn Dean Winchester for leaving when he was needed most. For being just like his daddy when the exact opposite of John Winchester was what they needed most now. What Sam needed most. Have no doubt, Bobby would be having words with his oldest kid just as soon as Dean showed back up from whatever fool errand had run him away from his family and his brother's bedside.

-o-o-o-

The fever got worse. It became hard to discern reality from the dark and terrifying thoughts his brain supplied on a never-ending loop in his unfocused, chaotic mind.

He should never have asked Dean to kill him. That's why his older brother had abandoned him, that's why he was alone to face this pain and hurt and misery. He'd pushed Dean away, asked him to do the one thing he could just never do. Sam wasn't an idiot. He remembered, vividly, every time John had taken Dean to the side to reprimand him. To remind him what his job – his only job – was. Sometimes he would scream it right to Dean's face, the youngest Winchester standing on the wayside, wide-eyed and scared and unable to look away.

 _Take care of Sammy._

That was always what John Winchester told his son. They were lectured on cleaning their guns, on running faster, on shooting straighter, on knowing more and acting quicker. They were grilled and berated and it had never stopped, even when their Dad was in a rare, good mood. But Dean only ever had one real job.

 _Take care of Sammy._

Sam could remember each time Dean had been yelled at, screamed at, reprimanded and brought down, all on his behalf. He knew how John had raised his older sibling. The disappointment in his eyes, and the anger and heartbreak in Dean's.

And now. Now, the last words Dad would ever say to him, the last thing Dean had heard, was an order to save or kill the one thing he'd formed his entire life around. The one thing John Winchester had raised him to never let happen. And Sam had looked him right in the eye and asked the same. He'd had no right to ask that. Less than no right, since he _knew_ what it would do to his brother. He was worse than his dad, and he'd sworn to himself his entire life that he would _not_ be John Winchester, even if it killed him.

In the morose and dark headspace, clouded with fever as withdrawal shook his frame and blood addiction screamed through his veins, Sam couldn't help but think this just might.

But Hell wouldn't let him go this way, would they? That was the whole point of asking Dean in the first place. The Colt was the only way either he or Dean would see an end to this. Even if he died here, they'd just bring him back.

Or Azazel would see to it that he got more blood in him first.

The sudden thought was so terrifying in its possibility that it damn near shocked him out of his fever-crazed, shivering state. The wards. He had to check the wards. The salt lines too. He had to make sure the demon could not get in this house. Could not bring more of that damn red hell with him.

God, he wanted it. He wanted it _so badly_.

He needed to warn Bobby. But he couldn't warn Bobby without admitting what was happening. And if he admitted what was happening, he was pretty sure the next thing out of his mouth would be to beg Bobby for what he so desperately needed. What his stomach was eating through itself for, what every bone in his body squeezed and ached for, what his muscles convulsed and clenched for until he was sure they would break his own bones with their force.

No, he couldn't tell Bobby. He couldn't own this, not now, when he knew he couldn't control what would come after.

So instead he sat, fevered and paranoid, watching the shadows and seeing yellow eyes in every corner, blood seeping from under the beds and down the windowsills until he had to shut his eyes, cover himself in blankets like a frightened child, and whisper over and over again that they couldn't get in.

-o-o-o-

Bobby kept bringing glasses of juice for the kid, though it seemed fairly random when he'd drink them or not. Soup and OJ went back downstairs, hours after going cold and warm respectively. The kid sometimes managed to keep down the cranberry juice, so Bobby eventually stopped with the soup and just delivered a glass every couple hours. He left the crackers, hoping when Sam came out on the other side of this, he'd be able to stomach the bland substance.

Over the passing day and a half, Bobby gathered damn near every blanket in his house and piled 'em on top of the kid. He knew next to nothing about taking care of a sick kid – outside of the handful of times one of the boys had fallen ill while staying with him. Even then, though, Dean or Sam usually took over for the other like a well-oiled machine. Those boys hardly ever _needed_ him around.

Still, that was no reason not to be there for them all the same. That's what family did. So he piled blankets onto the miserable, shaking, beanstalk of a man who looked more pathetic than a drenched, homeless kitten caught in the rain. Bobby had learned the hard way he had claws like a damn cat too. The kid got a couple real good hits in the first time he'd gotten too close trying to wake him from a fever dream.

It sucked balls having to listen to the kid toss and turn and cry out in his fever-fueled mind, but trying to wake him had been arguably worse, leaving the kid awake but in fear-soaked delirium. So Bobby left him be as much as possible. He checked on him every couple of hours, cycled through glasses of water and juices, and spent his off-duty hours reading everything he could find about demon blood and other, mundane addictions.

-o-o-o-

Sam wanted to die. Anything to end the pain racking his body. It was everywhere and it was inescapable. No position eased the fierce aching of his bones, the tense spasms and twitches of overused, undernourished muscles, the burning in his eyes and just behind them as well. His head pounded away a constant headache, his fingers cramped and throbbed from fisting the sheets, now soiled with sweat and sick.

He hadn't wanted to die before, that much was very, _very_ crystal clear to him now. He had never realized how very much he did not want to die, until he was lying there in Bobby's spare room and all but begging for it. He'd never been in so much pain in his life.

It was right around his first thoughts of death that the hallucinations started.

-o-o-o-

The unrelenting puddle of blood crawled across the cabin floor, seeking him out. He couldn't move away – couldn't leave Dean. His muscles didn't work anyway. He had no bones in his body. All he could do was slump over his brother's unbreathing body and watch the blood encircle him. Creeping, growing, climbing, until he was swimming in it. Drowning in it.

There was Dean, in his arms, eyes a foggy blue, unseeing as a halo of red spread from the back of his head. Sam wanted to pull away. Blood leaked from his brother's forehead, gurgling out of a bullet hole straight through his head, right between those unseeing eyes. A bullet Sam had put there himself, Colt still hot and smoking in his hand, covered in the blood. He barely registered what he'd done, though. Once he smelled it, once he saw the red, he couldn't see anything else. Sam _wanted_ that blood. He licked it right off the weapon that had murdered his brother.

That was the first time he threw up. It was hardly the last.

Dean, Dad, Jess. He saw them all, dead in his arms, crimson spilling from their bodies, soaking him. He swam in their blood and all the while his throat seared with dryness and he begged for an end to the thirst. An end that was soaking through his clothes, coating his skin, choking his resolve with terror and need. All he had to do was drink it.

John Winchester stood over him, eyes so full of disappointment that Sam broke down and sobbed at his feet. Begged him to understand, that this wasn't his fault, that he didn't want any of it. But his dad had never been one to listen to him. Sam took to keeping his eyes squeezed shut whenever John showed up. That resulted in his father's deep voice filling Sam's head, relentless, never-ending, hounding. His voice was quiet. Calm. Even-tempered, as he rarely was, but so filled with disappointment that the boy cringed at every syllable. Each word condemned him for his father's death, hammered him into the floorboards for John's fate, for the pain he was suffering in Hell, surely, even now.

Sam sat, rocking against the wall that substituted a headboard, hands clamped over his ears and eyes shut against the ghost of his dead dad's accusations.

The torment was never-ending. He may as well have made the deal to save Dean himself, because this was a hell of his own making. Sam saw flashes and images too garbled together, too filled with panic and pain and fear, to tell apart. His mom, pinned to the ceiling, dreamily smiling down at him, so damn proud. Jess, suddenly beside her, the same grin stretched across her face even as blood dripped from her stomach. His brother, standing in front of him, terror in his eyes as Sam, wearing Lucifer like a sweet prom tux, held the Colt to his own head tauntingly. The sound of a gunshot, then he was falling. Falling, falling, falling, all the while wearing the devil, or was the devil wearing him? He hit rock bottom and arched his back away from the cold and the emptiness of the world. Azazel grinned down at him as he lay in the grave, stone walls stretching up, up, up. Too high to ever climb out of. He would never leave this place.

The demon extended his hand to fetch him, to bring him to his side, free him from the prison of his human body. His hand was coated red, dripping. The blood was hot and warm on Sam's face. Too close to his lips.

He screamed and screamed, fighting to get away, because even buried in Hell, in the cage, with no other way out, he refused to take that hand.

Through hours and hours of fevered hell, ever changing, ever terrible, Sam found himself in places he knew and others he didn't. Those he found comfort in were perverted by pain and fear. There was the panic room, the iron in the walls glowing red hot around him as he tossed in his sweat-soaked cocoon, trapped in the heat as he burned alive and boiled from the inside out. Dean and Bobby were trying to burn the demon out of him, but it wasn't going to work. He couldn't take it, couldn't survive it. They were killing him.

He was in Jenny's house – their house – lit aflame and he, with no way out, calling to no one who could hear – no one who would answer – as the water evaporated from the very air around him, his throat parched and burning. His body burning. There was an old tomb, dark and cavernous and empty and cold. He remembered the cold, because it was so jarring from the fire and flames that it possibly hurt more. He begged for the heat back, the warmth of the sun, the touch of his family. Of anyone at all. He had never felt so alone. Alone but for the eyes in the darkness, green and bitter and mad and staring straight through him.

It was Max's apartment, with the kid flat on the ground, neck twisted around, vertebrae jutting up against purpling skin at unnatural, broken angles. He stared accusingly at Sam with clouded blue eyes that followed him despite the fact they never moved. Couldn't move. Max was very much dead.

His shack, his castle in Flagstaff, all his and only his, for two glorious weeks. Only Bones, his dog, was nowhere to be found. He wasn't coming back. Azazel had snapped his neck and left his body, forever alone, in the woods. Or had it been John?

Then he was awake, and that was maybe worse.

Sam saw the demon everywhere. The foot of his bed, where he'd stand for hours, never moving, just staring. Sometimes he was right beside him, looming over the edge of the mattress, knowing Sam was too weak to even roll away. The corner of the room with the worst of shadows that had always sent him scurrying beneath his covers as a child. The closet he and Dean stored their guns and duffels in every time they stayed at Bobby's for any length of time. His favorite seemed to be spread out across Dean's bed as a taunting reminder of his brother's absence and abandonment. Always, he boasted a smile that split his face in two, blood dripping from his yellowing teeth as he held aloft an offering of glass and crimson that had Sam reaching for the demon as often as it had him screaming at him to leave him be.

He'd smashed the first jar clear across the room, but that had left a wall painted in blood, dripping, crawling, _climbing_ , and the smell of iron and need filled the room until Sam was gagging from it. After that, he let Azazel taunt him all he wanted with that jar, just so long as the blood stayed inside those glass walls.

It was when the fever dreams and delusions finally ended and Sam sat, shivering and sweating, stomach cramping from a hunger he knew he couldn't feed, legs shaking from the aches and pains of joints and bones, mind foolishly wishing for death just to end the sheer misery leaching into every inch of him, that he knew he would never touch a drop of demon blood again. He couldn't. Wouldn't be able to, for the sheer terrifying knowledge of what came afterward.

If he had to go through this again, Sam wouldn't survive. He knew that, as sure as he knew his own name. He would give in, beg for blood, do horrible things to get it, of that he had no doubt. Now, more than ever, he believed the future his brother had told him about.

When the fever finally broke and the young hunter managed to keep down more than just a glass of juice that he was fairly certain he'd only drank because it was _red_ , he came through the other side with a terrifying mix of trepidation and resolve. They'd never have to worry about him drinking demon blood again. Not in this timeline.

Unfortunately, something told him Hell wasn't going to accept his stance on the subject.

-o-o-o-

As the second day passed and the crippling symptoms began to lessen, Sam found a certain level of clarity about his current situation. The ability to think clearly for the first time in forty-eight hours also graced him with a calm he hadn't felt in weeks, or possibly months now. He owed his brother an apology, that much he knew. (Dean owed him one, too, but that was no revelation and certainly not something he'd hold his breath for.)

He also didn't want to die, something Dean deserved to know and which he needed to affirm aloud. His brother had asked him for faith, something that could not have been easy for his hardened sibling, and Sam wouldn't let him down. Dad's death hurt; his last words hurt even more. But Dean wasn't Dad, and Sam knew that. Loved that.

The problem with the blood was a far more serious one. Flirting with death had been, for all intents and purposes, a last resort. It was something he shouldn't have brought up at all, mostly fueled by grief and fear. The blood, however…

The blood terrified him. He'd take dying over being turned into whatever he had been for the last forty-eight hours. He knew, had Azazel somehow showed up in that room with a supply, Sam wouldn't be here now, back to rational thought and a growing determination to face this the right way. He'd have been at the beck and call of his mother's murderer, if only to stop the pain and feed his hollow veins. The thought was almost enough to empty his meager stomach contents all over again.

That was withdrawal after only a single dose, and he knew from guiding Brady through such withdrawals that this one had been thankfully _short_. His body's reliance on the drug had not been built up over time, and was more like an overdose than true withdrawal from a dependent substance. The troubling question he couldn't let go, though, was what would have happened to him if he had taken more.

Azazel had already gotten him to drink it once. He'd almost gotten him to do so again back in that cabin. Sam seriously doubted he'd be able to say no forever; the demon wasn't going to let him. Eventually, the yellow eyed bastard would find the right button to push, the right leverage that Sam wouldn't be able to fight.

But he could not allow himself to be turned into that craving, pathetic, bloodthirsty thing again. He wouldn't. And yet, it was very easy to see just how it was going to happen.

Either way, Dean had a point, and one Sam needed to get on board with. If he had the gall to tell Dean to hold on, by fingertips need be, then he could swallow his own words and do the same. He'd told Dean back in that cabin – compressing his chest every other second, blocking out the statics and facts condemning his brother to death in his head, desperately pleading to be wrong about each and every one so his brother would just _breath_ – he'd told him that he couldn't do this alone. It was unfair to expect – to ask – Dean to do any different.

-o-o-o-

He made it downstairs towards the end of the second day. The sun was starting to sink in the sky, painting Bobby's den and kitchen with dusty, deep yellow light. There was something warming about it after spending forty-eight hours as a popsicle. Sam was still shaky and his joints felt creaky and fragile as he descended the stairs, but at least he was upright.

"Hell of a cold," Bobby commented with a lightness that immediately put Sam on edge as he settled into the kitchen chair across the table from the old hunter. "You feeling better?"

The young Winchester nodded wearily, head in his hand. He _was_ feeling better, but that didn't mean he could still hold his head up on his own just yet.

"You want I should forget to mention that little bought of flu when your brother gets here, or you think he ought to know he might come down with it too?"

Sam grimaced at the dry words. They were caring, in the kind of reprimanding way only Bobby ever managed to pull off with sincerity, but they stung all the same. While the hunter hadn't said anything at all, he'd also said more than was needed to for the intelligent kid to read between his lines.

"Doesn't matter," he mumbled in reply, not quite making eye contact. Some of that newfound calm started to flag under the daunting task of admitting his sins aloud. "I don't think Dean has to worry about catching _this_."

Bobby nodded and the silence that filled the room wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as Sam had expected. After a moment, the gruff man scratched at his beard, fed a hand beneath his cap and repositioned it on his head, then cleared his throat. "You're a good kid, Sam."

Sam snorted, and Bobby gave him a look.

"Dean thinks so, too. Down to that boy's core." It was Bobby's turn to snort. "Might not say it in the best words, but it's there."

The young Winchester sat, staring at his hands on the worn surface of the kitchen table, and contemplated his friend and father-figure's words. He could still remember that itch under his skin, even without thinking about the need hours ago that had left him mindless and pathetic.

Quietly, he admitted, "I don't feel _good_ , Bobby."

"Well you are," Bobby insisted firmly, a solemn nod adding to the weight of his declaration. "Don't you let anyone, not even yourself, tell you any different, boy."

The sound of a foreign car turning into the dirt drive halted the rest of the conversation, but Sam figured there probably hadn't been much left to say anyway.


	40. Season 2: Chapter 7

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** The brothers are back together, but not all is well in the Singer House. Conversation, confrontation, and secrets are coming to a head. Sam's utterly done with it while Dean's still trying to figure out how to be done with it. An Bobby is Bobby. Awesome and supportive, with the occasional tough love smack to the back of a deserving head (better duck, Dean)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 7

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean entered the house with his bag of groceries and Plan C. His mood was greatly improved by pie and the overall feel-good-ness, which he couldn't exactly explain the existence of, but every time he started worrying about it, he somehow got distracted until the uncharacteristic hope pooling in his chest didn't seem all that important to dig into.

Despite the misdirection worthy of Copperfield himself, Dean was very much starting to suspect God had mucked around in his brain.

If that wasn't enough to dampen his determined mood (and dammit, it friggin _wasn't_ , by the nature of the very misdirection he ought to be annoyed as hell about), than seeing his brother certainly was. At the first glimpse of Sam, standing in front of one of Bobby's many bookshelves, a selection of books already resting in the crook of his elbow, their last conversation came flooding back. What Sam had asked him to do. And along with it came the desperation and the cold and the damn despair.

Dean felt that bubble of warmth in his chest warble and flag under the weight of the memory. Damn it, he really needed answers about that, because it was getting _weird_ now that he knew it was there. Worse, he was pretty sure he'd _gotten_ answers, only he really couldn't be sure because as soon as he tried thinking about it, he _couldn't remember anymore_.

Friggin' God.

Ruthlessly, he took the dark little raincloud hovering over his head, formed by his brother and his fuzzy memory and the stupid warbling chest angel, and shoved it viciously to the side. They weren't out of this game yet. They had Plan C, for starters, and Dean wasn't gonna stop there. Even if God was the reason he had the stupid, fluttery, feel-good hope of hope-y-ness in his chest, it was something that finally felt good. And damn it, they hadn't had _good_ in weeks.

He'd kick God's ass for it later. As soon as he found him again. Because… he had no idea where the guy was.

… _Jesus Christ_ , where had Dean even _been_ the last two days?

"Son of a bitch," the hunter audibly growled, finally tearing away from the frozen spot in the entrance to Bobby's study and heading straight through to the kitchen. He set the paper bag full of glass jars and pie down on the counter harder than he intended, though not harder than his current mood suggested. Sam, who'd already looked up from his research at his brother's entrance, moved into the kitchen at the loud noise and obvious tension filling the room. He brought with him a guilty look, which Dean spotted first, but quickly moved beyond to the dark circles, pale and sallow skin, and damp bangs.

His brother looked sick.

"You okay, Sammy?" Dean asked immediately, raincloud all but forgotten and chest-warmth sidelined in the face of his brother's slumped posture and finite trembling. Dread rapidly pooled in his gut as his mind easily supplied the most likely cause. "You're shaking."

Sam glanced down at his hand, fingers barely quivering now in comparison to twelve hours ago when he couldn't have even held his hand up, let alone kept it steady. "I'm, uh… I'm…"

He hesitated, stumbling over the words. Was he good? He clearly wasn't, but that didn't mean he wouldn't be. Couldn't be. He met his brother's concerned eyes. The trepidation he'd feared seeing was indeed there, blatantly on display, but in equal portions to the worry and fear born of love and, if he knew his brother as well as he thought, the guilt of leaving.

"I'm on the other side," he admitted quietly, giving Dean the confirmation that it was exactly what he was fearing. No point hiding it, and no desire to anyway, only shame. "I'm alright, Dean."

His older brother glanced down at his trembling fingertips, then back to his face, and the regret there was so strong that Sam almost forgave him on the spot. He didn't, of course, not entirely. Dean had left and that still _hurt_. Not to mention his timing had sucked (understatement of the century), but Sam knew Dean hadn't realized what he was leaving his younger brother behind to face alone. Not entirely, at least.

How could he? Sam hadn't said anything out of shame, or anger, or grief, he didn't know. All of the above, probably, but it wasn't the point.

"I'm sorry," the young hunter blurted out, locking gazes with his older brother who looked about a second away from saying the same. Sam needed to say his piece first, before he waivered or let Dean apologize his way out of everything, including the portion of guilt that was Sam's to bear. "What I asked you to do. I never should have- You didn't deserve-"

Dean nodded heavily, saving Sammy from having to put it into words, despite his need to. "Sam, you don't have to-"

"I don't want to die." The confession was just as sudden as his apology, and the younger Winchester gulped slightly as the way his brother's jaw clacked shut and he stared, wide-eyed and slightly horrified, at him. "But I don't want to start the end of the world, either, Dean."

"You won't." Dean's voice was soft, haunted even. "I swear to you, Sam. We'll figure this out. We always do. Trust me."

Sam nodded, almost by rote, but his throat hurt and his eyes stung and he couldn't form the words to say he had his doubts, had his share of old wounds not yet scabbed over, probably had so many more coming and he had no idea how he would ever endure them all.

"And I'll trust you." Dean's gaze was honest and _so damn_ _sorry_ when Sam's eyes snapped up to his. "I told you it's not about that and- and maybe that wasn't fair. I do trust you, Sammy. More than anyone. It doesn't stop me wanting to protect you. Sometimes from everything."

In the silence between them, Sam struggled to form anything in return. He din't know what to say. What he wanted to say. What he should say. He didn't want to have the same argument they always had. He wanted to tell his brother he didn't need protecting (was that even true anymore?) and have Dean actually believe it. He wanted it to be true, to stop feeling the weight of the futility of it all.

"If you never let anything happen to me…" Without his brain's consent, he found his mouth forming the words of a distant memory that came faintly, but seemed right. Because his brain was busy thinking of a little fish with a gimp fin; a film he would never have wasted an evening on if Jess hadn't insisted, plopping down on the couch with a bag of popcorn and a scandalized expression when Sam told her he wasn't into to kid movies.

' _It's not a kids movie!_ ' she'd rebuked, mock offense painting her beautiful face. _'It's_ _ **Disney**_ _. There's a_ _ **difference**_ _, and I will no long associate with you if you do the lawyer thing on this.'_

 _'It's called a rebuttal.'_

 _'You're a rebuttal. Now shut up, sit down, and watch the fishes.'_

Sam cleared his throat and fought the water mounting in his eyes at the memory. God, he missed her. But he remembered that stupid little fish, whose father had tried to protect him from everything. That damn, adorable little clownfish who Sam had related to on a level he was not comfortable admitting. "Then _nothing_ can ever happen to me."

Dean's brow was cinched together tightly, staring at his brother with heavy, dark eyes. "Did you…Did you just quote _Finding Nemo_ at me?"

Sam rolled his eyes, ignoring his brother's indignation with as much sass as an ailing Bitchface could manage. Of course Dean would recognize the movie. There apparently wasn't a movie on the planet his brother _hadn't_ seen and knew by heart. So instead, he translated; "Two Winchesters are better than one, but you've got to let me grow up."

Dean huffed, eyes darting over Sam's shoulder as Bobby approached from the study with his usual mix of both caution and fuck-it-this-is-my-house-you-idjits. The man from the future didn't fight the grin that spread across his face as their surrogate father joined them. "Throw in a Singer, and we're damn near unstoppable."

The old hunter glanced between the two boys, one raised eyebrow almost meeting the line of his cap. Sam sent a weak smile his way, but Bobby was confident it would strengthen with time. "Apocalypse don't stand a chance."

"Damn straight." Dean gave a resounding nod, then turned back to his bag of groceries and started pulling out a cardboard box that smelled suspiciously like pie – what else – and jars of ground herbs, dried leaves, and other assortments. "I got pie!"

And just like that, they were all almost okay again.

"And not much else edible," Sam chimed in, picking up jar after jar as Dean dug them out of the paper bag and set them aside.

His brother sent him a truly scandalized look. "Why would you need anything else when you have pie?"

Sam rolled his eyes again, setting one of the mystery jars down and looking at the growing collection coming out of the pretty full paper bag. "What's all this for?"

"Uh…" Dean balked for just a second, the hesitation and damn near panic perfectly clear on his face. His brain stuttered a minute.

This was Plan C. Plan C was awesome. Sam would love Plan C. Only problem was, he didn't actually know where the idea for Plan C had come from, other than to literally appear in the passenger seat beside him. Oh, sure, he remembered shopping for every one of those items in that bag – he'd apparently gone to three different stores to find it all. Only problem was, _he was also very much sure he hadn't done any of that at all._ And despite the little warble of joy bouncing around in his chest right now, Dean was also pretty damn sure this _wasn't his plan_.

He cleared his throat. "That's for summoning an angel."

Sam almost dropped the jar of white, soft petals he had just picked up. They looked kind of like jasmine. He stared at his brother, wide-eyed. "What?"

Dean shrugged self-consciously, all that confidence and warm, chest-gooyeness suddenly nowhere to be found. _Thanks, Sternum-Cas._ He set the pie to the side for later, and faced Sam and Bobby with as squared shoulders as he could manage and absolute uncertainty in everything else.

"We're gonna summon Cas."

His younger brother floundered only for a moment. It was long enough for Dean to wonder if maybe he should have snuck off to some abandoned barn to do this by himself like he originally wanted to ( _did he?)._ Maybe drag Bobby along just to keep Time and her 'some things should stay the same' crap happy ( _Crap, was that a thing he needed to worry about?) (God damnit, God!_ ).But when Sam finally stuttered out a response, it had absolutely nothing to do with summoning an angel at all.

"I- I thought that's who you went to see."

Bobby was ping-ponging between the two like a referee at a tennis match.

"Oh." Dean cleared his throat, blatantly ignored the wide-eyed, expectant, and dangerously-close-to-a-lecture look coming from his surrogate father, and awkwardly addressed his brother instead. "Uh, no, that was…someone else. Total bust too. This is Plan C!"

He gestured to the ingredients spread out around them on the kitchen table. Very Vanna White. Even had the smile and everything. That made Bobby Trebek, and Sam the nerdy college contestant who was gonna blow all that money on the final question.

Dean needed to start watching less television. He'd learned a long time ago that nothing good ever happened when his sense of humor started paralleling Gabriel's.

"Dean, who did you go see?" Sam was staring at him hard now, expectation and no small amount of concern seeping from every inch of his body. Bobby looked to be about the same. "Where were you for the last two days?"

"Funny you should ask that…" Dean trailed off as he rubbed the back of his head. He'd told Sam no more lies, and they'd just now had some sort of awkward, brotherly, I'll-trust-you-if-you-trust-me truce. But Dean wasn't about to tell him he didn't _actually_ know where he'd gone. Or come back from. Or what he'd spent two days doing.

Friggin' God, man!

"Dean." Sam's posture was rigid, his brow straight and heavy, forehead dangerously smooth. "Who. Did you. Go see."

"Look, before you two get on my case about this..." The hunter cleared his throat. So much for being almost all okay again. This was gonna be the shortest turnaround ever in the history of the Winchester brothers, and that was saying something. "I didn't want you to meet the guy because I was protecting-"

"Do not tell me you were protecting me!" Sam barked, cutting him off with a stormy expression. "Damn it, Dean! When are you going to stop pulling this crap? I'm not some innocent kid!"

"It's not about that," Dean argued back, running a hand roughly across his scalp as he struggled, once more, to put his reasoning (perfectly valid reasoning, thank you very much) into words that didn't make him sound like a total ass. "You're right, you don't need protection. I wasn't protecting you _that way_. I was trying to protect… _you_."

He gestured emphatically at his little brother, whose face was screwed up in the Ultimate Bitchface (unworthy of numbering, for it was _Ultimate_ ). Dean sighed, aggravated. "I know you're not some damsel in distress, Sam. That's not- this wasn't-"

It was clear from the look Sam and Bobby exchanged that he was failing spectacularly at this, and they had no clue what he was trying to get at.

"You're good."

Sam blinked at his brother's words, echoes of Bobby's own less than half an hour before; his adamant assurance that Dean thought the same, though neither believed they'd hear it from him. Not directly, at least. Dean didn't do direct.

"You're not like me, alright? You're _good._ You believe in God and angels and people actually being halfway decent. You have faith; I know you pray, and believe in the whole 'Plan' thing, despite our crap lives and every shitty thing that's happened to us. You'll always think God's up there, listening. That he gives a damn. The apocalypse doesn't really change that, Sammy." Dean's shoulders sagged, words winding down as he admitted, awkwardly, "I didn't want to ruin that."

Bobby and Sam both stared at him as they slowly realized that, somewhere in there, he'd admitted to who he'd gone to see. The wheels were obviously turning as they worked through the older Winchester's jumble of words for the underlying meaning. As they each got through it, Dean watched with building anxiety as their eyes widened and they checked in with each other, a clear 'he's not saying what I think he said, right?' on both their faces. Of course, it happened in slow-motion for Dean, but for everyone else it was scant seconds. Sam and Bobby were both veritable geniuses, and this wasn't exactly a Mensa puzzle they were solving.

"Dean, are you saying…"

Bobby picked up where Sam trailed off, "You went and had a chat with _God_?"

All Dean could do was shrug one shoulder awkwardly. Again. Sam practically choked. Bobby, at least, covered his equally negative reaction with a snort.

"You know… You know _God?_ " Sam asked somewhat weakly once he'd recovered. At the same time, Bobby crossed the two feet of distance between them to smack Dean on the back of the head.

The hunter, halfway to opening his mouth to say ' _well, before yesterday I did,'_ yelped like a chastised child. "Jeez, what was that for, Bobby?"

"I don't s'pose you have any clue what a dumbass move that was?" Bobby's tone was certainly reprimanding, and Dean had the decency to not quite meet his gaze. "Sam said you weren't doing anything dangerous. Kinda got the feeling _yelling_ at God qualifies as dangerous, ya idjit! It's damn stupid, at the very least."

"It doesn't matter," he dismissed offhandedly, rubbing the back of his stinging head with a glare. "He wasn't going to do anything. He's not interesting in 'interfering.' He's not interested in anything."

No need to mention the fact that he was pretty sure God had altered at least some of his memories, which was _something_. Something entirely unhelpful, that was. But it definitely wasn't information at all necessary for this discussion. Not at all. It would probably get him another smack to the head. All the more reason not to bring it up.

"You already knew that, though," Sam realized softly, staring at his brother with something eternally sad etched across his face. Dean mistook it for the loss of faith he'd been so weary of causing and his shoulders slumped further in the face of all but shattering the last of his brother's innocence.

"I'm sorry, Sammy," he mumbled.

But Dean had misunderstood his brother's reaction, and Sam was already shaking his head, expression smoothing out into discontent blankness.

"That's your faith. Not mine."

Dean blinked at the suddenly dark tone. It was nothing compared to some of the fights they'd had or some of the times he'd truly ticked his brother off, but it was still pretty up there on the scale of Pissed Off Younger Brother.

The older Winchester's confusion must have been evident, because Sam continued, "You're talking about your lack of faith like it's mine. Like God not living up to _your_ expectations cancels out what I believe. Your faith doesn't define mine, Dean."

"It's not about faith," his brother immediately argued back, brow furled like he didn't have a clue in the world what Sam was so upset about. "I've met him. He's a douchebag. A deadbeat who doesn't give a crap about any of his so-called 'kids.'"

The taller man shook his head, ignoring his brother's finger quotes and growing annoyance with him. "Even if that's true, that's not how _faith_ works. God, this is your problem! This is why you don't trust me, Dean, even when you think you actually do!"

Now Dean was getting riled up as well, anger beginning to buzz in the back of his skull at the attack coming out of nowhere, at least from his perspective. "What the hell, Sam. How is this about me?"

"Because you already told me God was a deadbeat and angels were dicks. And you _just_ said it doesn't change me, that the apocalypse doesn't change what I believe. And yet you kept me away under some pretense of protecting my, what, my faith? Faith you don't even believe in. And I don't mean faith in God; I mean _me_ , Dean. You don't believe in my faith in myself, let alone have any faith in me yourself."

Sam tossed his head side to side, a disbelieving huff passing through pursed lips. "That's such bullshit, man! You can't keep making calls for me like that."

Truly baffled, Dean threw his arms forcefully out to the sides. How the hell had they circled back to _this_ again!

"It doesn't matter if God's a deadbeat," Sam responded to the non-verbal (and pissy) question. "It doesn't matter if seeing Him would have destroyed my faith or anything else. You didn't give me the chance to find that out on my own. You decided it would, and that's that. Choice made! That's not protection, it's control, Dean. And you have to stop it, right now. I'm not kidding."

Something clicked that never had before, and Dean's arms fell like cement weights to his sides. He stared at his brother, bits and pieces of so many arguments they'd had through the years coming back now, some in a much clearer light. It wasn't a lightbulb above his head or a lighting strike of epiphany, but for Dean Winchester it was damn close.

"You say you trust me, that you know I can take care of myself, but you don't _let_ me." Sam's shoulders sagged slightly, the wind in his sails beginning to falter as his anger lost steam, leaving just the overwhelming sadness that he'd felt at the start of it all. He'd yet to see the way Dean was staring at him as anything other than the continued disconnect the brothers had had for years on this subject. The disconnect Sam was fairly certain they'd always have, so long as they could survive it, and he didn't know how long they could. "I need to call my own shots, make my own decisions. I can't do this any other way, Dean. Not with what's coming."

Dean could only keep staring. Sam's expression was so damn disappointed and resigned, like he'd had this argument a hundred times and already knew it would change nothing, even if his anger remained and his feelings were justified. Dean struggled to keep that gaze; it hurt something deep inside him and yeah, okay, maybe they'd had this argument a dozen times, but for some reason, either Dean was actually listening or he'd finally heard the words enough to learn their meaning.

The room was heavy as silence settled between the three of them. This wasn't Bobby's fight, of course, and he'd managed a step or two back from the boys to have it out. He was family, though, and it was testament to that that neither Sam nor Dean felt his presence as awkward or intruding on this very personal, charged conversation.

Sam heaved a final, exhausted breath. "We have an impossible task ahead of us, and I can't do it alone. I don't _want_ to. But your way or the- no, just your way, no highway option, isn't going to work. We do this, it has to be together, Dean. As equals."

Dean huffed, crossing his arms loosely over his chest, far less defensively than the others were probably expecting. "Robin and Batman, not Batman and Robin, huh?"

Sam didn't laugh right away, like Dean had kind of hoped but ultimately knew wasn't likely. He just stared, eyes bordering on further frustration. Finally, he hung his head. With an exasperated headshake and matching sigh, looked back up and tried not to smile that exhausted smile of a younger brother who constantly had to be the more grown up one.

"Partners. Brothers. Not older and younger, not hero and sidekick."

Scrunching up his face, Dean gave almost a comical impression of thinking before nodding in acquiescence. "Dynamic duo. Team Free Will."

It was Dean's (only) way of breaking the harsh tension of a serious conversation without dismissing it. This was Sam's older brother saying 'I hear you' in the only language he knew.

Still, the man cleared his throat. His expression tried for serious and landed shy of it, somewhere around sheepish. "You know, I'm damn near forty, and that's one thing I'm still total crap at."

He chanced a glance at his brother, rubbing the back of his neck. Something in Sam's eye must have triggered a change, though. His green gaze turned somber and he dropped his hand. "I'll try. I swear, Sammy. I'll give it my best."

It took a moment of Sam's challenging stare, before the younger relented an nodded solemnly in the end, accepting the concession. The look in his Dean's eye was enough to convince him he was taking this seriously, and he may finally understand what his brother had spent years trying to communicate.

Off to their side, Bobby let out an audible breath of air and it made the younger Winchester chuckle. Before he knew it, it was a full laugh. Dean cast him a suspicious look, but Sam just shook his head with the first real smile he'd felt in weeks. "Dude. You're _old_."

So maybe he was letting the tension in the room slide away in no more mature a manner than Dean had tried. And maybe he was accepting the easy-out. But it was worth it to see the way his older brother's face screwed up into something appalled and offended, and he twisted his body like he was going to leave, only he had nowhere to go.

"Shaddup," he settled on, making a beeline for the fridge instead, all the while grumbling, "I'm not old. You're old. Your _face_ is old. Shut up."

-o-o-o-

"So," Bobby began conversationally a handful of minutes later as the three men sat around the kitchen, beers in hand. The gruff man shot a look towards the various supplies spread across his kitchen table, a couple still on the counter by the sink. His tone may have been conversational, but the scant glance was anything but. "We gonna summon an angel, or what?"

Dean swallowed his beer a little more forcefully then he would have preferred, trying to cover up the choking cough with an ill-disguised throat clearing. "We probably shouldn't tonight. It's getting late."

The look he sent the scattered jars of herbs, flowers, and powders was nothing short of longing, Sam thought. Or, it would have been, if Sam knew he wouldn't get his ass kicked just for thinking something like that. More worrying, however, was the hesitation there. His brother was a gung-ho, go-getter. Fly by the seat of your pants, plans are for sissies. He didn't do hesitation, not when it came to action, especially not when he already had a plan (labeled and everything)

But the way his eyes met theirs, a little too quickly before dropping back to his beer, told both Sam and Bobby that he was about to give some crap reason to put it off.

"We should wait till the Impala's fixed up."

Bobby harrumphed and Sam stared on, brow pinched in concern. He shifted in his chair. "Why? Why wait?"

His older brother looked really uncomfortable for a moment, wiggling in his chair and completely oblivious to the blatant tell. Truth was, Dean needed time to think. Hell, he didn't even know if summoning Cas was his idea or God's. If it was God's, why the hell did he wipe his memory of it? Why not just friggin' tell him like a normal person!

Because he was friggin God: the kid with an ant farm.

"Cuz it's not as simple as just waving a magic wand and poof, Cas!" he grumbled into his beer before taking a long swig to put off the topic for another moment more. "We can't do it here, for starters. We'll have to find a safer place."

"Safer?" Sam blinked, surprise warring with immediate worry at the implication of those words. Why, exactly, did they need to be safe from a potential ally and friend?

"Than this house?" Bobby balked, almost at the same time. The hesitation that had been painted across the man's features tripled. Maybe even quadrupled. "Why in hell's name do we need something safer than my home?"

The forceful gesture he aimed at the walls around them was, in no way, exaggerated. Bobby Singer's house was one of the safest places from supernatural forces on the planet. If they needed something more, what on Earth were they talking about summoning?

"Uh…." Dean neglected to answer, instead he started digging into his jeans' pocket for his phone. "That reminds me, we'll need to grab one more thing."

It hadn't been in with the rest of the supplies. Another oddity, since Dean very clearly stopping at all those different stores for the various ingredients. Well, maybe not _very_ clearly. Okay. Maybe not clearly at all. Kinda foggy around the edges actually… Whatever. Point was, he was pretty sure this wasn't one he would have forgotten.

Just another sign that God had mucked around in his brain, something he really wanted to be more furious about than he currently was. Hell, he'd settle for angry. But he couldn't seem to stay on topic long enough to really care.

Mother. Friggin. Gods.

Scrolling through his contacts, he ignored the curious looks his father figure and brother were sending his – and each other's – way. The phone started dialing and Dean raised it to his ear.

"Hey, Pastor Jim!" he greeted with a fond smile when the line picked up. There was something awesome about talking to the guy he'd spent his fair share of weekends with growing up and who hadn't been gutted by a demon bitch this time around. It wormed its way into his chest, not so different from that warm confidence and, dare he say, hope that he'd felt earlier. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could get my hands on some holy oil, would you?"


	41. Season 2: Chapter 8

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Quality Warning:**_ _I wrote this chapter four weeks ago and two friggin' days ago I found a crap ton of notes for it. And I just haaaaad to go back and work it all in because darn it, it was decent stuff. Which just kept making it *longer* Gaaaaaaaaah. So, uh, anyway, the editing on this is kinda shoddy, little hobbled together, and entirely last minute._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:**_ _No actual chapter warnings (whoo-hoo, break from the total angst fest!)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 8

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Jim Murphy had not only known where they could find some holy oil, he happened to have a supply of his own, as it turned out. Not _his_ , per say. It belonged to the church, but he was sure they would not miss it, given he believed whatever task the boys needed it for would be for the betterment of the world.

Sort of, Dean supposed. It would be if Plan C went according to, well, plan.

They spent the first day after Dean returned by climbing into Bobby's old junker truck and driving to Blue Earth, Minnesota. At first, Dean had insisted on fixing up the Impala for the drive. Sam balked – there was no reason not to take the Pinto or delay their tip to the good father by days. Only after hour two of Dean's grumbling and bitching about the miserable excuse of a stolen car, not to mention the fact they'd have to hotwire it every time they got it started (' _that'll be real subtle, Sammy. Won't scream 'I stole this!' at all.')_ , did Sam cave and send pleading puppy-dog eyes Bobby's way. The gruff hunter tossed the kid his keys and told them, in no uncertain terms, to get out and best be gone for _at least_ eight hours. He was too old for this crap.

Jim's church was only a couple hours away from the salvage yard, so the boys spent most of the day catching up with the older pastor, who had been a friend and mentor of theirs since Sammy was still in diapers. Dean just kept letting that niggling warmth in his chest glow all happy behind his sternum, ignoring the oddity of it and, what he suspected, was some serious brainwashing on God's behalf.

He'd be so mad about that if it wasn't so damn good to feel hopeful. And if he could, you know, focus on the problem for more than the three seconds it took his brainwashed-mind to jump ship. He was worse than a dog with a squirrel. He was a friggin' goldfish.

Bobby happily stayed back at the house for their little errand. Not only did he not want to be the third body crammed in the truck's relatively small cab, but he needed a break from his boys. Parenting sucked some days. Not that he didn't secretly love it.

Originally he'd offered to go out in search of this 'safer location' Dean was insisting on. But the older Winchester shot him down, adamantly insisting he needed to be there for the search. A search which, according to him, wouldn't be right without the Impala. Figuring it was just another one of those weird, I'm-From-The-Future quirks, Bobby backed off and agreed to dig around for a summoning spell that would fit both the deed. The time traveler didn't argue, despite knowing the spell by heart already.

After most of a day spent catching up with the pastor, the boys turned the old junker back towards Sioux Falls. The ride back to Bobby's was amiable, both men's spirits lifted by their friend and old babysitter. Sam had a feeling from the way Dean greeted the pastor that maybe things hadn't gone so well for him the first time around. He'd nudged his brother for more information as soon as Jim left the nave to fetch a container of holy oil he'd left in his office, but Dean just shut down and muttered, darkly, a single word: Meg.

Sam hadn't asked any further. He could picture how that worked out for Jim, and it wasn't a picture he liked. If he hugged the pastor a little harder on their departure, neither his brother nor Jim said a thing. Now back in their borrowed vehicle, the mood optimistic in a way only the good father could ever foster, Sam asked the question that had bothering him since the previous night.

"Why are you stalling on summoning Cas?"

Dean usually charged head first into things, especially things that were hasty and dangerous. The fact he was hesitating, that he wanted time to _think_ it through, was disconcerting to the younger Winchester. Sam wasn't sure whether to be concerned or amused. Certainly confused.

His brother's answer of "I'm not" were followed so quickly by a cleared throat and the confession of "Okay, I am," that it might as well have all been one word. Sam raised his eyebrows and waited for his fidgeting brother to continue.

"We _just_ lost dad, alright?" Dean bit out, and while Sam winced, he forced aside any other reaction. He'd been expecting this, actually. Angry, bitter, blaming Dean was familiar. Truthful Dean was someone he actually trusted less. He was harder to read, ironically. "Can't we have a _week_ to recover from the latest shit show that is our lives, before jumping head first into the next thing?"

Sam chewed on his lip to keep from speaking too soon, rising to the bait like his brother wanted him to. He did his best to keep the pitying look off his face, knowing Dean would only grow more furious if he saw it, especially when he realized he wasn't pulling any wool over Sammy's eyes, not this time. Instead, the younger man counted to ten several times over – a trick he'd been trying to get Dean to pick up with little success before taking off for Stanford – then countered softly, "Of course we can. I think it's a great idea. But that's not what this is about, is it?"

Silence reigned, and Sam let it. He knew his brother. Silence would ultimately be his undoing.

Sure enough, Dean cleared his throat again less than a minute later. "Look…Cas is kind of a big deal, alright? We can't do this without him, so we can't fuck it up. Right now, we're off our footing. _I'm_ off my footing."

While Sam was suspicious about his brother's promise to come clean – alright, perhaps not suspicious. Apprehensive? – he was also fairly certain this was exactly that. Dean actually coming clean, in the most Dean way possible.

"Are you…." Sam blinked at his brother, then shifted in his seat to stare more head on at his brother, who refused to take his eyes off the road. "Are you _nervous_?"

"Yes, I am!" His older brother's quick exclamation actually startled the young Winchester, who had fully expected the version of Dean who was full of bluster and puffed his chest out in the face of fear. "You should be too! No- wait, damn it, don't be nervous."

Dean gave an aggravated noise deep in the back of his throat and hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. The man from the future was trying to give himself a seizure between the glances towards his brother, than the road, than his brother, then shaking his head and finally looking like he wanted to facepalm into a friggin' wall.

Sam stared at him for a moment, something between worry and deep, loving endearment filling his gut and chest. This wasn't the type of nervous born of fear. He knew what that looked like, rare as it was in his brother. There might be a little of that in his brother right now, but it wasn't what had Dean so damn out of sorts. This was more like the jitters - like asking a girl out. Only, well, no, not _Dean_ asking a girl out. There wasn't anything Dean was more confident about, other than hunting of course. More like his brother preparing to meet an idol. Steven Tyler or Brian Johnson, maybe. His brother would be this freaked out right before meeting one of those guys.

Except for that flicker of uncertainly that kept flashing across his face before he clamped down on it _hard_. Like he'd clamped down on his future-self back in dreamland. Sam could almost see the mask slamming down in place.

"Dean, what's going on?"

His brother closed troubled green eyes for a moment – only a moment, he was driving after all – before he forcibly swallowed whatever had him so tongue-tied. His fingers wrung the length of the steering wheel, missing Baby's smooth leather and comforting grip. Finally, he licked his lips and opened his mouth, "Cas didn't start out on our side, okay? It took a _lot_ of convincing and some damn bad stuff happening in between for him to realize _we_ were the right side."

"And…without all that happening?" Sam asked cautiously because that was _exactly_ what they were about to do.

"I don't know," Dean breathed out. He was rubbing at his chest distractedly. Sam didn't think he was aware of it. "I think I can talk him into it."

The younger hunter didn't want to point out that this didn't really seem like a good situation to only _think_ and not _know_. "If you can't, what happens?"

His brother winced, rapping his knuckles against the steering wheel in a nervous gesture. "Best case? He sends me back to my time."

"That's- _Best_ -" Sam practically choked, but he swallowed back the immediate fear and looked away. He wasn't going to confess how much that possibility scared him. How much that had been scaring him since he realized the implications of his brother going off to scream at _God_. It hadn't taken much for his never-silent brain to supply that little tidbit, and Sam was ashamed of the all-gripping panic that had encased him at the thought of doing this alone.

Sam's throat closed up on him again and he cleared it harshly, refusing to let that terror show. Dean wouldn't let it show.

Without his brother though…. He couldn't do this. Bobby knew the truth and what was coming, so he wouldn't entirely be alone. But he knew they didn't stand a chance without Dean. Neither of them knew enough, and despite growing attempts, Dean had not prepared either of them to face the full extent of what was coming without him.

Turned out, Dean wasn't the only co-dependent Winchester brother in this story.

"Uh…wh-what exactly is the _worst_ case here?"

His brother was silent for long enough that Sam was now officially on Team-Stall-Summoning-Cas. He was, in fact, thinking maybe they should rethink this entire plan, after all.

"He reports it to Heaven," Dean finally supplied, "and we're all screwed. They'll break the timeline, we'll lose our one advantage in this, and most likely? Zachariah will hand deliver you to Azazel and probably keep me under house arrest until it's time for the big showdown."

And without Cas on their side, they wouldn't stand a chance against any of that.

Sam breathed out…something. He wasn't even sure what it was – it certainly wasn't something _nice_ – but his brother nodded along with it in agreeance.

"Yeah, so, you know," Dean swallowed a little thickly, eyes still on the road and Sam could hear the avoidance in his voice. It was ridiculous that _this_ was somehow more dangerous than hunting God down for a personal scream fest. "Maybe don't give me crap for thinking this through a bit more than usual."

"No, yeah, uh…" Sam stuttered out, nodding his head way too damn much, way too damn fast. He was still processing – shell shocked – and incapable of much more as he sat, numb, and watched the world pass them by. "Take your time."

Silence filled the car for several miles as Sam worked through the last thing he'd been expecting. What had he expected? Sam's thoughts flashed back to Missouri Moseley, her deep voice and soothing words trying to hush down his brother's fear of a man with black hair and blue eyes. That day back in Kansas, Sam assumed the man was Cas and his brother's fear came from the demonic presence holding something dangerous and costly over his brother's head. Later, he assumed it was the price Dean paid for the Colt.

Then came Dean's confession that Castiel was an angel, and Sam thought, maybe he wasn't the man with blue eyes. He'd all but written the idea off once Dean confirmed Cas as their best friend and ally. He couldn't have been the blue eyed man, then. Dean wouldn't be afraid of his best friend. Even with Sam's doubts that Castiel was some magic guardian angel conveniently arrived on his brother's behalf, he still trusted Dean enough to know when to be suspicious and when not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Now? Sam found himself rethinking everything, with little conclusion or comfort in any of those thoughts. Was Dean afraid of the angel? He'd stressed, heavily, just how dickish the species could be (' _no better than demons_ ,' had been his words, _'cept for Cas, of course_.') If this angel hadn't started out on their side…

Honestly, Sam was struggling with the concept of Dean befriending something so wholly inhuman. He understood the brother that sat beside him was not the same that he'd known his whole life. Things changed – would change. Still, it was difficult to accept the augmented reality without proof. Now? Dean was telling him they were best friends with an angel that had started out as an enemy, and one worth being afraid of?

Sam didn't know what to think.

"Dean, what does Cas look like?"

His brother shot him a questioning look, eyebrows raised. It was clearly not the question or response he had been expecting. "A wave of celestial intent the size of the Chrysler building?"

Sam choked again, eyes the size of saucers. He had no clue if Dean was joking.

"Don't ask me, I never saw it," he supplied with a shrug. "Here on Earth he looks like an IRS agent. Tan trench coat, suit, tie: the whole deal."

Sam waited for more, but Dean didn't seem to be catching on to what he really wanted. "Hair color, eye color?"

His brother shot him another weird look. "Black. Blue. He's a little shorter than me. Maybe six foot. You want his weight and zodiac sign next, Sam?"

Sam didn't bother returning the snark. That was exactly what Missouri had described, but it didn't make any sense. Why, _why_ would Dean be afraid of the person he claimed was their best friend? The one he hadn't planned on summoning way back then, so he had no reason to fear his interference…right?

The younger Winchester bit back the thought that saying something might be a bad idea, and instead asked Dean straight up, explaining what Missouri Mosely had seen and said. Dean's grip on the steering wheel tightened again, wringing at the leather, but he didn't shut down like Sam expected him to.

"I figured," he muttered, recalling how Bobby had mysteriously known Cas's features. "Damn meddling psychics."

"Why were you afraid of him?" Sam asked again, desperately needing the last piece of this puzzle, but also weary of the answer. They could really use a win right now, that's what Dean would say, and Sam couldn't deny it. His brother had started out so excited to summon Castiel, and now Sam was starting to wonder just where that excitement was coming from, since everything about this venture sounded dangerous and borderline suicidal.

"At the end-" Dean cut himself off sharply, emotion thick in his throat even as he cleared it. "Before he sent me back, Cas wasn't himself. Not fully."

Sam's brow cinched together. "What do you mean?"

"He was possessed," Dean replied, and Sam could only blink, a thousand questions springing to mind but his mouth unable to form any of them fast enough. How could an _angel_ get possessed? "The details don't matter. That's what Missouri must have picked up on."

The man from the future shut his eyes against that wicked smile spread across his friend's face as Cas turned on Dean, head dipping, blue eyes staring up at the hunter from beneath long eyelashes. Dean knew in that moment that his best friend was about to kill him, with his bare hands, _slowly_. The look had been demented; the whole thing terrified Dean in a way very few things ever had. It was a moment his brain refused to forget, despite his best attempts.

So, yeah, little surprise Missouri picked up on that. Seeing his mom's ghost burn up on the ceiling the same day probably hadn't helped that whole mental control thing, either.

"We got nothing to fear from Cas," Dean supplied, clearing his throat again and shoving away those memories, old and new. "Unless he decides not to listen to us."

He shot his brother a sheepish smile that went absolutely nowhere in comforting Sam.

"Are you sure we should summon him?" Despite his own growing concerns, Sam tried not to sound as worried as he was, aiming to be a support pillar and not a sledge hammer taking down whatever flimsy structure was still standing in his brother's head after almost seven months of time travel. "Maybe we should wait."

"No, we're gonna need him," Dean answered evenly enough that Sam could tell he'd already this argument several times with himself. He started rubbing at his chest again. "And I need answers. We've barely got a clue what we're doing, Sammy. We need someone who knows more."

The younger Winchester was quiet, back to staring at the passing scenery before he answered, softly, "…Okay."

-o-o-o-

"This is it?"

Sam winced at his brother's exclamation. The two stood in front of the wreck that was the Impala, or at least what was left of her. The entire side and rear of the car was totaled, crunched in like a candy wrapper. The right passenger door and trunk had taken the brunt of it. Honestly, Sam was kind of impressed Dean had survived, unbuckled and injured in the backseat as he was.

Thank God they'd put him in with his head on the other side of the car.

"Man, you had me worried," Dean continued, voice sounding way more optimistic than it had any right to be when staring down the annihilation of literally his favorite object on the planet. Sam stared at him with disbelieving eyes. "This isn't so bad. Way better than last time."

"Wait, really?" The younger of the two scrunched up his face, glancing back and forth between his recently demonically-healed brother and the car that had put him in a coma. How could the damage have been _worse_?

"Oh yeah," the man from the future nodded, eyes alight with some twisted sense of excitement. "This'll take way less time. Look, the truck hit the back passenger side." He pointed to the damage like Sam was supposed to see something specific, and not an almost entirely wrecked car overall (which is exactly what he saw because, overall, the poor thing was _wrecked_.) "Last time it T-boned the front seat dead on, completely totaled the engine. Had to build her from scratch. But look at her!"

Dean threw his arms wide, an enormous grin stretched across his face.

"The frames busted, yeah, but I bet her engine's just fine." He let his arms fall back to his hips, expression sobering ever so slightly. "We'll disassemble it, of course; check each piece. A blow like that probably rattled her. Besides, it'll be good practice for you; learn how she runs. Then maybe you'll finally pick up chicks like your awesome big brother."

Sam choked on the laugh that came, unbidden. He'd expected Dean to be pissed. At best, morose for his poor baby. But apparently, this was an improvement over the previous time. Not that Sam could see anything particularly optimistic in the twisted metal, other than the fact that they'd walked away.

Well. Most of them.

Despite the sobering thought, he couldn't help the scoff that tugged at the back of his throat and he rolled his eyes just because he could. Leave it Dean to be the man from the future he barely recognized one minute, only to jump back to being seventeen years old again. That Dean Sam knew only too well.

He held his hand out for the crowbar. "Whatever. Just tell me what you want me to do, jerk."

Dean grinned, slapping the tool into his brother's outstretched palm with a satisfying weight, over-enunciating the first letter as he replied with, "Bitch."

-o-o-o-

Sam was on bolts duty while Dean properly assessed where his Baby stood: what was salvageable and what was fodder for the scrapyard. They were only an hour or two in before Sam started flagging. The sun wasn't high in the sky yet, given the mid-morning hour, but the temperature was rising, particularly in the yard, where there was no shade and nothing but reflective, heating metal and bright dirt to shine the sun back on them from every angle. It took a while for Dean to notice, no doubt because Sam hid it as long as he could. Soon enough, though, the sweat dripping down his face, skin a couple shades too white, and the tremble in his limbs were no longer concealable.

"Let's take a break," Dean announced after a moment of watching his brother struggle with his relatively easy task of loosening anything he could get a tool around: nuts, bolts, screws, the like.

Sam huffed in response, clearly annoyed with his body not being able to handle even the simplest of physical labor, and even more so with Dean for bringing it up. "I'm fine. We have work to do."

Dean took a couple steps back from the car. He hadn't really dug into his poor, sweet baby yet, though he'd just about been ready to start doling out the more complicated tasks that came with deconstructing a totaled vehicle. Still, this wasn't just about fixing up the Impala, so he made his way over to the cooler, popping the lid and digging inside the ice. He tossed a water bottle to his brother, who nearly fumbled the catch and frowned at his shaking hand.

"Car's not going anywhere," the older of the two joked, uncapping his own bottle and taking a long swig. "There's no rush, either. We got plenty to do, but plenty of time to do it."

Sam glared down at the water, but his throat was aching with thirst and the sickness he was still shaking off. So he cracked the lid and took a seat on the cooler. After he'd drank no less than two thirds of the bottle, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, closed his eyes against the bright, warming sunshine, and had to admit that sitting down felt immensely better on his still aching joints and muscles.

When he opened his eyes several peaceful minutes later, Dean was staring at him with so much guilt that Sam found himself grunting, "I'm fine, Dean."

"I know you are," came the immediate response. The words were steady and serious, and Sam squinted over at him, wondering immediately what conversation they were about to launch themselves into. Then he wondered how he could put it off for another several hundred years. Sam would accept the title of hypocrite, he really would. "I should have been here."

The younger Winchester closed his eyes, taking a deep breath of warm, dusty air in through his nose and letting it out through his mouth. Jess had dragged him to yoga once, and it was just about the only thing he'd taken away from that class, other than the knowledge that he had way worse balance than he'd ever thought.

"Yeah, you should have," he answered calmly and matter-of-factly. Dean winced at the response, but it was nothing more or less than he deserved, in his opinion. Besides, Sam had said it without heat or accusation: just stating fact. "But you won't always be. You can't always be. And I handled it."

His voice sure sounded more confident than he felt, but Sam reminded himself that he _had_ beat it. Was he sure he could do it again? Not at all, but that didn't negate that he'd won this first battle, and he'd done it on his own.

"It's not fair," Dean growled out from his side, glaring off past his wrecked Baby, hands on his hips and expression dangerous. "You shouldn't have to go through this. You didn't choose it, Sammy; he practically shoved it down your throat."

Sam clenched his eyes shut against the memories, the illusionary ones and the real, of blood creeping towards him in an ever growing puddle. His stomach clenched. He no longer wanted it, no longer thirsted for it so much that it hurt, but the memory of that need was fresh enough to hurt all on its own.

"Dean."

"I won't let him do it again," his brother bit out, despite the warning. Sam opened his eyes once more to find Dean staring down at him, fiercely protective. It was oddly comforting, despite still not wanting to discuss this.

"I won't. This-" he gestured to Sam's still trembling frame and the sweat pouring off him, despite the break- "this won't happen again."

The younger of the two was far less sure, but he nodded anyway, taking another sip of the icy water that curbed his thirst. A thirst still left over from two damn days of hell.

Silence passed between the brothers once more as Sam nursed his water and Dean brooded in silence against the Impala, arms crossed over his chest.

"Look, I gotta say it, and you're not gonna like it," Dean started up after another minute. He pointed his bottle in Sam's direction. "I think you should hang back when we summon Cas."

Sam opened his mouth to argue immediately, _pissed_ , but Dean talked over him.

"It may not play out the same way this time, but Cas was a dick to you at first." Sam closed his jaw, slowly, still staring with an angry expression, though it held traces of confusion and curiosity there as well. "It wasn't all his fault. Heaven dragged your name through the mud, man. The 'boy with the demon blood.'"

Whatever relief from the dust and sun the water had provided was gone now, dried up in an instant, leaving Sam struggling to find a place in his mouth for his tongue. He couldn't stop himself from wincing, or push down the flare of pain and shame that ignited in his chest.

"That's not you, Sam," Dean bit out fiercely, either in reaction to the pain on his baby brother's face or in a rage all his own. Sam forced the shame aside and met that angry, protective gaze. "It wasn't you then, either. It was bullshit, is what it was – _is_."

"But Castiel may not know any better," Sam picked up, easily seeing where this was going. "Not now. Especially when I'm like…this."

Recovering from addiction and withdrawal from a substance that, yeah, Heaven would absolutely find appalling. _Abomination_. He didn't know where the thought came from, but his heart squeezed at it, and he fought away the disparaging voice clawing at his heart like acid.

"Cas becomes your best friend, too, Sammy. Like a brother to you, I swear. It just…" Dean shook his head, obviously recalling a memory and dismissing it. "You got every right to be there this time, to make it different. But…maybe it's not a great idea."

Sam didn't answer at first, thinking over the newest bombshell in what was sure to be several days of pure firestorm. Finally, he stood back up, setting his water on one of the tool tables they'd scrounged up for the job. "I appreciate the choice, Dean, I really do. But I'm going."

It was testament to how seriously his brother was taking their previous conversation, that Dean only nodded in acceptance and didn't argue. Sam moved to get back to work, only to be all but shoved back onto the cooler with a single, motherly look that would have put actual mothers to shame across the globe. He opened his mouth to protest again, but Dean cut him off.

"Sit down before you fall down," he growled out, grabbing the crowbar from the table. "You're shaking like a leaf, Sammy. Just watch and learn."

Sam let out an annoyed sound at his brother's purposeful bluster, but he relaxed back on the cooler with a light glare instead. "Addicts are supposed to keep busy, Dean."

His older brother fumbled with the first placement of the crowbar against ruined metal, and coughed awkwardly to cover up how blatantly uncomfortable he suddenly was. The man from the future stared down at the iron in his hands, knuckles growing white around it before he forced his grip to relax. "You're not an addict."

Sam hadn't meant to bring the conversation back around. Or maybe he had.

He'd been reading up on those books Bobby had gotten, both from his own collection and several he'd picked up in town since Sam had shown up on his doorstep and given him the scare of his life for the following forty-eight hours. One of them, on recovering from addiction, just happened to show up on the kitchen table shortly after he'd come downstairs that first time, and Sam didn't bother wondering if Bobby had left it out on accident or purpose. He'd fought to keep the shame off his face, embraced the truth of exactly what he was now, by choice or not, and picked it up. That afternoon, he tucked into Bobby's comfortable, worn couch and buried himself in one of the strengths he still very much had.

"Maybe not by choice," he said, because he could hear what his brother wasn't saying. ' _This time_.' Which might as well have been a ' _yet'_ as far as Sam was concerned. "Will and intention have nothing to do with addiction."

"The truth is that I wanted it." Sam had to force the words out, and put every inch of the strength he had left into keeping his voice even. It may have only been a couple of days, but Sam was never one to waste time when it came to employing his new understanding of something, particularly if that something affected himself or the ones he loved. And all his reading so far had led him to believe if he could own his shame, then he could own his recovery too. "I wanted it since the cabin. It may have happened different here, this time. I may not have chosen it, but I have to acknowledge it either way if I'm going to fight it."

Dean remained uncomfortable, his rigid posture showing every failed effort to relax, but he nodded all the same. This didn't feel like the last time, but Sam had a point. They'd be stupid to ignore it just because it happened differently. The man from the future had to concede that if the addiction part was going to stay the same, this version of events was infinitely better. No, it wasn't fair that Sam had this forced on him, but Dean wasn't going to lose his brother to it this time. Not by choice, and that made a hell of a difference in his book.

And if what Sam needed to keep that up was Dean's acknowledgement and support, however hard, than he'd fucking support him till he was blue in the face. Coming home to find his baby brother had gone through withdrawal, while he was fuck-all elsewhere, off on a trip purely about anger and revenge and not anything useful or even important, had been a very hard pill for Dean to swallow. One that was washed down with an unhealthy gulp of ' _do better_.'

So that's what he was going to do. That's what they were both going to do.

"Okay," he said, though he knew it was probably a lot less resounding than either of them needed. He'd work on that. "We're going to kill him, Sam. Yellow Eyes is next on the list."

Sam ducked his head with a huff of air, staring at his hands. "There's a list?"

Despite not being able to see it, Dean could hear the curiosity in his brother's voice, which was as good as a smile some days. "Hell yeah, there's a list. And soon as we cross off Azazel, Ruby's next. Then you'll be right as rain."

His grip on the crowbar slipped and he stumbled painfully into the car when his brother asked, "Who's Ruby?"

-o-o-o-

By the time Dean finished answering all of Sam's questions about the manipulative demonic skank that would trick him into the real deep, dark, no-going-back blood addiction and, oh yeah, set Lucifer free by killing Lilith, it was well past lunchtime and both boys were ready for a break. Sam was looking pretty pale and shaky, though whether that was the tail end of withdrawal still working through his system or the possible future he might start in two years' time, Dean couldn't say. Probably a bit of column A, a bit of column B.

They headed back inside, where they helped Bobby with the groceries he'd just returned with, since Dean hadn't actually picked up anything but pie. The gruff man had steaks, beer, and something that looked suspiciously like salad, which Dean declared entirely for Sam. No way Bobby was a rabbit food eater. Dean's heart wouldn't be able to take it.

The old hunter had an ancient George foreman grill out back, which needed some serious cleaning and TLC, but Dean didn't mind the chore while Sam and Bobby prepped food. He was pretty sure the old man was providing a steady, mild flow of work for them entirely on purpose. A leaky sink here, a squeaky door there. They were mostly mindless, time-consuming tasks in and among fixing up the car that provided the Zen sort of stress relief both boys desperately needed, even if they refused to admit it.

Grieving 101 by Bobby Singer: work around the house and don't talk about it. Probably a healthier coping mechanism than Dean's 101, which consisted of rebuilding the Impala just so he could destroy it himself with a crowbar or, you know, find God and punch him in the face. Chores were also easier to swallow than Sam's 101: talk it out over hair braiding and pregnancy breathing exercises.

Yeah, Dean had no problem letting Bobby quietly bully them through his grief counseling course.

They grilled up the steaks and talked about what would be needed for summoning Castiel. Dean eyed the heaping helping of rabbit food Bobby gave himself, and blamed Sam entirely for ruining the last of his childhood heroes. Bobby was obviously just trying to keep the kid happy by taking some of those greens onto his plate as well. Obviously. Dean decided he would have to be the balance that maintained the world and therefore took none for himself. Should balance out that disgusting fact of Sam having more leaf on his plate than meat. The savage.

Meanwhile, Sam was keeping half an eye on his brother for entirely different reasons. The way he was ducking questions about summoning the angel, particularly the _when and where_ detail, kept raising little curious flags along Sam's mental periphery. They weren't red flags, not yet anyway, but coupled with the talk they'd had on the way back from Pastor Jim's, Sam couldn't help but wonder what it was he was missing.

-o-o-o-

"What's he like?"

Dean paused from his spot back beneath the car, dismantling the axels and…uh…Sam assumed the other stuff that made up the underside of a car (so sue him, he wasn't a car guy). It was late afternoon now, dusk just starting to settle on the distant edges of the horizon and they'd be out of light in another hour. His brother's voice was muffled by the damaged metal between them as he asked, "Who?"

"Castiel." Sam was busy prying sheets of crunched and dented metal off the equally damaged frame of the right side of the car. Dean had finished the driver's side before lunch, but Sam had insisted he was recharged enough for the task. He'd already gotten the passenger door almost fully stripped. It had been pretty easy, suffering far less damage than the back door he was currently struggling with.

"Uh, well… He started out a total nerd angel." Dean relaxed back under the car, settling into the easy, repetitive motion of dismantling the undercarriage as he spoke. "Turns out he's a baby in a trench coat. A _badass_ baby, granted, but a total baby." Dean chuckled, some unknown memory obviously occurring to him. "He was all serious when we first met, but he loosened up over the years. Even started trying to crack jokes there at the end."

The words flowed more easily the longer he talked about the angel that would be their best friend. He joked with Sam about the poor guy discovering Netflix and perfecting the binge to an unhealthy amount that had resulted in Dean confiscating the laptop and insisting the angel go reacquaint his body with that thing called the sun. And his inability to ever get idioms, even after some super-powered bookworm named Metatron had zapped all the references straight into his head.

Sam could tell Dean was skirting things – that some of this stuff wasn't all good or hadn't come from good – but he didn't call his brother on it. Not yet. It was clear from the way he spoke that Cas was important to him, and would be important to _them_. Sam still had a mountain of reservations about summoning the angel, but he was beginning to understand why Dean still wanted to.

In a way that Sam was smart enough to identify as childish, he wanted to skip the hard stuff and move right into having that best friend. Sam was introspective and honest enough to admit that he missed _friends_. Traveling the country with his brother was not a life he regretted, though how they'd gotten into it certainly was, but it could be difficult spending twenty-four seven with the same person, with very little other socialization.

Of course, it was also kind of weird to find yourself envisioning a friendship with a guy you'd never met and who, apparently, was just as likely to ruin any future you had together as he was to improve it. Right. Couldn't forget that little detail.

"What's he going to be like when we summon him?" Sam found himself asking suddenly, not quite interrupting his brother but not exactly being subtle about where his thoughts had gone off to.

Dean shrugged, not that Sam could see it, but he knew his brother well enough. "Stoic, man. Angels think they don't have emotions, so they like to pretend they don't. Except being arrogant dickwads. They embrace that one fully."

"Arrogance isn't an emotion, Dean," Sam chided, though there was barely enough eye rolling to count.

"Yeah, well, you haven't met Zachariah," his brother countered, the scraping sound of tools on metal stopping momentarily. "That guy redefined smug as a state of being. Cas was different, though. He wasn't smug, he was-"

 _Intimidating_ was the word Dean wanted to use. The angel had made his damn knees shake, if he was perfectly honest. Not that he would be, not about that and definitely not to his kid brother. The creature that had first walked into that barn, though, or that time in the kitchen when he'd almost casually threatened to throw Dean back in Hell like it was as easy as rip, toss, zip. _That_ guy had terrified Dean, and he found himself suddenly struggling just to swallow. He hadn't really missed that Cas, per say, and he wasn't too sure he was looking forward to interacting with (or _surviving_ ) him again.

"-intense," is what he settled on instead, thinking about the guy Cas had grown into. "He has this creepy, intense stare. Makes you think he's looking right through you. And the guy never smiled. It took him years before he figured it out."

He laughed from beneath the car, the memory of those first few attempts at human interaction – God, the FBI interviews – almost making his eyes water. "He was terrible at it."

Sam couldn't help the answering grin to his brother's descriptions, even as they tapered off into silence, clearly thinking back on memories of the angel. He kept at the paneling, reveling in the almost jovial banter and especially the grin he could hear in Dean's voice.

"This one time," his older brother started again, the laughter just barely contained beneath his words, "I took him to a brothel."

Metal clanged as Sam slipped on the door, the crowbar hitting the dirt with a loud thud after the horrendous metallic screech it made on the way down. Dean couldn't help it, he burst into a ruckus of laughter from beneath the car.

"Yeah," he choked out in response, despite Sam not having said a word as he bent down to scoop up the dropped tool. "He called it a 'Den of Iniquity.'"

The younger of the two choked as he stood back up abruptly, crowbar in hand. Good, god, his brother was a _child_. Dean rolled himself out from under the car with a grin nothing short of devilish, and Sam tried not to laugh.

"The dude's eyes were this wide," he said, forcing his mouth into a thin line and opening his eyes as wide as he could. He only managed the look for half a second before he burst into a raucous of laughter once more. "He was _terrified_."

Sam groaned, shoving the end of the crowbar back under metal and fighting against his own grin. "Why? _Why_ on earth would you take an _angel_ to a brothel, Dean!"

That had to be some sort of blasphemy.

Dean just sniggered, knowing Sam was finding it just as funny underneath all that pretension. He pulled himself back under the car, the sounds of metal scraping on metal floating up once again as he got back to work. "I wanted him to experience life! You know, the stuff worth fighting for."

His words trailed off, the jovial mood still there, but dampened somehow. Sam paused in his tugging, eyeing his brother's legs at the lapse in story.

"It was the guy's last night on earth," Dean finally continued. His voice was still light – lighter than it had been in weeks – but Sam could tell this wasn't the happy part of the story. "We were snaring an archangel the next day. He didn't expect to survive it."

"Where was I?" Sam didn't know why, but he knew that _we_ didn't include him.

The silence got darker: deeper and lonelier. Sam didn't regret asking, but he knew immediately he didn't want to hear the answer. He was pretty sure he already knew it, after all. _Ruby_. Dean kept working without answering, and the younger Winchester thought, briefly and with growing disappointment, that maybe he wasn't going to keep that promise he'd made.

"We split ways at that point," Dean answered, the noise actually startling Sam. "Fallout over the, uh…"

"The demon blood," Sam supplied. And the demon supplying it. A wave of disappointment, new this time, washed over him. It was for himself, which was weird. He was disappointed – devastatingly and shamefully so – at a version of him that had made bad calls, in a life he had never lived.

"It's not gonna happen this time, Sam."

Sam looked down to find his brother out from under the car once more, staring at him with earnest emotion in his eyes. He met that gaze and couldn't look away, not that he honestly wanted to. Dean was all he had left, and for once there was recognizable faith in that green gaze.

"No, it's not," he answered calmly and _believed_ it.

Dean held the look until Sam turned away, back to the car and the piece of metal he had half pried off. He went back to the job, and his brother slid under the vehicle once more, the tinkering noises resuming.

"So," Dean spoke up after a moment, that grin back on his lips and in his words, "we find Cas this gorgeous little thing named _Chastity_."

Sam groaned as loudly and obnoxiously as he could. "You've got to be kidding me."

-o-o-o-

Hours later, Sam lay in the bed upstairs, atop the comforter and quilt he'd decided to keep spread across the bed. They'd changed his sweat-soaked, soiled sheets the first day he'd come downstairs, and Sam reveled in the fresh laundry smell and _cleanness_ of it all. Dean was sprawled across the other mattress, staring at the ceiling. It was late, and Sam had eventually conceded the need for dinner and bed.

"We should talk about it."

His brother cast him a sidelong look, eyebrows raised but expression otherwise blasé.

"What more is there to talk about?" Dean asked in return, glancing from his brother to the lamp on the little nightstand between them. Neither had thought to turn it off before collapsing on their respective beds, and both were now just out of reach of the switch without putting in more effort than either wanted to. "It happened. You got covered, and you're better now."

"No," Sam shook his head. "Dad. His death."

Dean stilled for a moment, quite the feat considering he'd hardly been moving before, but eventually he loosed the tension in his frame and resumed his staring at the ceiling. He didn't say anything, though, and Sam figured if he wanted this conversation, he was going to have to pull most of the weight.

"Tell me how it happened the first time."

"Nothing to tell, Sammy." Dean kept his eyes forward, though he knew his brother's were on him. "I woke up in the hospital, no memory of being a ghost, and dad died. Same way."

The younger Winchester bit back a sigh, and went for attack move #3. Silence and staring. Which, after a period of extended silence without results, could be adjusted by modification 3.1: an added warning of, "Dean."

His brother made an aggravated noise, the regret of his promise clear in the disgruntled look he sent Sam's way before conceding. He began the story farther back this time. He told Sam about how Meg had gone after their friends, first Jim and then Caleb, demanding the Colt. How John had gone to meet her with a fake from an antique store, and they'd taken him instead.

Sam marveled at the way things had happened the same way, even weeks or entire events apart. The way Meg had gone after their friends – Garth instead of Pastor Jim, because Dean was the one with the Colt, not John. Yet their dad had still ended up with the gun, shown up with a fake when it was demanded in exchange for a loved one's life.

No wonder Dean was at the end of his rope. Things could happen weeks before or after they should, still in the same way, rendering Dean's knowledge of each event useless except to bitterly watch them happen, helpless to stop them. That would drive anyone to the point of seeking out God and having themselves a little screaming fest.

"Then Azazel got in him," Dean continued, the bitterness in his voice a direct contradiction to his stiff, tension filled form lying flat on the bed. "Tried to trick us, get me to hand over the colt."

"How did you know it wasn't Dad?" Sam asked it on impulse, something desperate flaring in his chest. He needed to know. He needed to know the signs he had missed in his best friend for two whole years.

Dean chortled bitterly, bringing his younger brother's attention back to the present with a twinge of something uneasy in his stomach. "He told me he was proud of me."

Sam's eyes widened, brilliant mind having no problem connecting the dots and finding the punchline in a joke that wasn't funny long before Dean finished telling it.

"I wasted a bullet from the Colt on some no-name demon." Dean's smile was brittle, filled with self-loathing and irony. "And he told me he was proud. He should have been furious. I knew it wasn't him immediately."

His younger brother didn't know what to say. He had wanted Dean to work through their Dad's death, knew he might shove it all deep down, well aware his brother was not good with grief or mourning or emotions in general. But this Dean already had gone through that, and now he faced the guilt of perceived failure, in addition to a whole new round of grief. Sam had no idea how to walk someone through a second death, one they had known was coming, fought tooth and nail to prevent, and wound up facing it anyway.

Sam might be the closest thing to proficient in Dean Psychology, but even this was beyond his limits.

"I miss him," Dean admitted roughly, surprising Sam with the sudden confession. His voice was croaky, hands shaking atop his chest as he stared up at that water stained roof. They'd spent so many nights in this room, abandoned by the man that was supposed to be there for them, always. "He was a bastard. A self-righteous _asshole_. But I miss him so damn much."

"He was still our dad," Sam offered quietly, understanding completely. He was probably one of the few people on the planet who could almost always understand his brother, no matter the timeline.

"Yeah," Dean said, sniffing away the tears and pain. He finally turned to look at Sam, and his little brother smiled sadly from the other bed, eyes equally watery and just as silent about it.

"I miss him too, Dean."


	42. Season 2: Chapter 9

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns:** Welcome back to Fixing-The-Impala Part II! Thank you to everyone who left thoughts, commentary, all out screaming about how they still haven't found the bunker key (Oh, oh, oh, you poor things. You think it's going to be that easy? You think I'm going to be a *nice* author? Not a chance ;)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:**_ _Sam's asking the real tough questions now, and Dean's stalling on more than just his answers._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 9

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Fixing the Impala – building all but the engine pretty much from scratch – took four days. Sam was impressed it didn't take longer, but Dean was nothing if not dedicated. And he'd always been a good teacher. He had a way of making mounting tasks seem easy, just step by step until you're done.

It was too bad he hadn't figured out how to apply that mentality to life, or the daunting task they faced on the horizon.

The four days passed in rolling waves banter and laughter-filled highs, often juxtaposed by lows filled with difficult conversations Dean struggled to get through. But he did get through them. Some were easier than others. It helped that Sam rarely asked for information outright. He'd get Dean talking on a somewhat safe topic that would inevitably turn dark, because very few moments in their life weren't a catalyst for, or the result of, something much more devastating. Those were the hard moments: the true lows. Sam wouldn't push, but he wouldn't let Dean off the hook, either. He just worked in silence on the Impala while his brother figured out the best way to admit something he'd really rather Sammy didn't know.

Eventually Dean would cave or figure it out, because he'd made a promise and he was _trying_. Sam would keep a tight grip on his immediate reaction, doing his own part to lessen how hard this was for his brother and, honestly, for himself. He'd ask questions, get Dean to clarify, usually concerning context. Sometimes he would ask what they were going to do to change it. Dean rarely had answers to those questions, but Sam didn't stop asking them.

The current silence was one of the longest so far, and it was a really bad time for it, too.

"Dean?"

There it was, Dean thought from the backseat, where he was laying the carpet out on the floor pans and securing it in place. The seats had survived pretty well. Dean had stripped the leather to clean the blood and buff any scratches, but they'd been lucky not to need to replace it. That shit had to be custom ordered. The carpeting was still a custom job, ordered earlier in the week on their first supply run, a rush job that had the owner of the small, hole-in-the-wall autoshop practically clicking his heels together over, since it was probably half his yearly profit.

But back to his brother currently bitching at him from the hood of the car, where he was re-assembling the engine just as Dean had shown him. He'd made the kid take it apart by himself too, just so he'd known what each piece was, what it did, what it looked like undamaged versus damaged, and how it connected in the overall machine. He was going to make his brother a capable car guy, even if he couldn't make him an actual car guy.

Sam's recovery gained leaps and bounds over the four days of light labor. He still got the shakes on occasion, despite his best efforts to hide them from his brother. But his appetite was improving, his strength returning with every task he conquered on the Impala and every forced break Dean made him take. By the fourth day, he was almost back to himself.

 _"Dean_."

His bitchface-ing, over-demanding, younger-brother-but-I'm-still-smarter-than-you, self. Yipee.

That was Sam's warning tone. The one that meant his brother was seriously starting to worry about what was - or wasn't - going through Dean's head. Not that Dean had been expecting anything else given their current conversation. Turns out, when someone asks, _'Gee, how did you handle that round of torture with a demon so well?_ ' they're somewhat entitled to freak out when you don't answer them back.

While he was still trying to figure out how ( _ **if**_ _, Dean. Be honest)_ he was going to answer, Sam pulled away from his work, all sounds of the reassembly chore coming to an end. Dean knew he had to bite the bullet and soon, or Sam would come marching around to his side of the car. Then he'd have to have this conversation while looking his brother in the face.

"I spent four months in Hell," he managed to blurt out, without a lot of thought on consequences and whatever the opposite of consequences was. Silver linings? Nope, forty years on the rack certainly didn't come with _any_ of those.

The silence stretched to cringe-worthy lengths before Dean found his brother marching around the car anyway (well, not so much marching as approaching almost cautiously) and stopping just outside the newly paneled door to stare at him with an almost unreadable expression. Whatever that muddled look was supposed to mean, Sam was very clearly tortured by his newest admission.

Dean was getting tired of seeing variations of that face, more and more harrowed with each newly dropped bombshell.

Sam started to speak, then stopped and had to swallow whatever had lodged itself in his throat at the thought of his brother stretched across a rack, enduring far more than what Azazel had dished out at that cabin, and enduring it for _months_.

"How?" It was all he could get out, but it was the most important to him. _How_ did his brother end up in Hell in the first place? With what Dean had told him so far, it just didn't make sense. Heaven needed him as a weapon. Had Hell dragged him under to keep him out of the angel's reach? And where had Sam been when this was going down? "I thought you said Heaven and Hell needed us. Why would they let you die?"

Dean sat back against the freshly re-upholstered leather, staring out the new windshield of his baby at the rest of the salvage yard beyond, before he closed his eyes against it all and took several deep, steeling breaths.

"They needed me in Hell to break the First Seal." He refused to look at Sam as he got back to work. Work was better than breaks and breathing and definitely better than looking at his brother's positively wrecked expression. Work filled the silence and distracted him from the void in his chest that didn't exist anymore, but somehow he knew was still there anyway. "I told you, we both help start the end of the world, Sammy. My first gig was breaking on the rack. Picking up a blade and making others bleed instead."

"What?" The word was breathless, not out of disbelief or doubt, but out of pain. "That doesn't- You can't be the only- _Why?_ "

"To break the first lock on Lucifer's cage, a Righteous Man has to spill blood in Hell." He said it bitterly, practically spitting out the title he had never wanted, nor ever thought he deserved. Maybe he actually had before he'd sold his soul, but he certainly hadn't after everything that came next. It had grated on his skin like sandpaper to hear Cas refer to him as such again and again.

Sam's brow furled, classic Sasquatch mind racing to fill in the blanks his brother wasn't saying. "How… How does a righteous man end up in Hell?"

His brother not answering him was all the answer he needed. Weight settled in the bottom of his stomach like he'd swallowed a medicine ball. Sam knew the answer before he asked the question, but he had to ask it anyway. He had to know, because he had to be wrong.

"Dean, what did you do?"

-o-o-o-

Bobby was in the study, pouring over an ancient tomb written in a language barely even recognized as a language anymore, when Sam came into the house. The way he threw open the screen door and stormed into the kitchen spoke of anger and urgency. But the way he came to a halt almost immediately inside the threshold, standing, listless, in the room and staring Bobby's way made the old hunter think he was more overwhelmed and lost than anything else.

"Sam?" he queried pretty quietly for his usual gruffness, eyebrows raised and research set aside for the moment.

"Did you know?" the boy croaked, then swallowed heavily and tried again. "About Dean's deal?"

Bobby gave a rough sigh, pulling off his baseball cap and scratching at his thinning hair. Damn that boy, sometimes. "He hasn't done it yet, Sam."

Sam's look turned, if possible, even more despairing than it had a moment ago. They both knew that _yet_ was kind of the key word, there.

"I won't let him," the giant of a man said suddenly, eyes hardening with resolve as he stared at the old hunter, though Bobby was fairly certain he wasn't actually wat Sam was seeing. "He's not making that mistake twice. I'm not worth the end of the world."

With that, Sam stomped back out of the kitchen, screen door slamming once more in his wake. Bobby collapsed into his chair with a loud, embittered sigh. He was too old for this crap, and those boys both need a kick in the pants if _worth_ is where they both kept going anytime someone made a choice based on love and not logic.

-o-o-o-

Sam came charging out of the house only minutes after he'd gone charging in, and Dean prepared himself for the reaming of a life time. It would probably be very similar to the first time Sam had figured out what he'd agreed to. Of course, he knew he'd gotten of fairly light for that, given that the deed was done, there was nothing Sammy could do about it, and he didn't care what it cost.

This was going to be infinitely harder because asking for permission was sure as shit more difficult than begging for forgiveness.

"You are going to promise me, here and now, that you will not sell your soul for me."

Sam's stance was something out of a damn action movie, featuring a boss villain or some shit like that. All wide legs and power-house shoulders, offset with tightly clenched fists that made his arm muscles bulge. That brown gaze was firm and _terrifying_ and could have broken world leaders.

Kid would have made a damn amazing lawyer.

Dean managed so far as to stop his work, stare at his superstar of a brother, and not much else. He almost got around to opening his mouth, but nothing came out, which just left him awkwardly staring Sammy's way with a half open jaw that clacked shut almost immediately. He looked away.

"Are you kidding me?!"

The man from the future winced at the furious anger in his brother's voice. "I know, Sammy, okay? I know! But that doesn't- I can't- I-"

"Dean, _no_."

The older Winchester was looking away again, a weird expression on his face that Sam recognized instantly. That _'I did something you're not gonna be happy about'_ look Dean got where he wouldn't quite meet Sam's eyes and screwed his face up something funny. Sam's shoulders dropped with realization and he lost all forward momentum, practically sagging away from his brother and the car.

"You already thought about doing it, didn't you? Back in Wyoming."

Dean struggled with that face for another moment before he reluctantly met his brother's demanding, disbelieving gaze. "Only as a last resort. I had some other, uh, equally stupid ideas to try first."

Sam knew Dean was trying, however poorly, to lighten the mood, but this really wasn't the kind of thing he was ready to joke about.

"You promise me, right now. If I die – at _any_ time – you let me stay dead." Dean immediately opened his mouth (probably to argue), but Sam wouldn't let him. "I mean it, Dean. I'm okay dying if it means we don't end the world or start the apocalypse."

When his brother just stared at him – straight through him- with eyes as wide as they'd been when he mimicked his angel the day before, Sam finally let the disappointment – in himself, in Dean, in destiny, in _everything_ – show through on his face. "Don't you think that's worth it?"

Dean looked away, past the brand new windshield and the world around them and the timeline they were currently riding out. He was thinking of the future, of a world without his brother that he had tried so hard to navigate and had failed.

"I don't know how to live without you, Sam."

The taller man sighed at the slump of Dean's shoulders and the lost look in his distant gaze. He knew that, now. He hadn't before – he had majorly underestimated his brother's dependency on him, on this life – but he knew it now. He understood it, too, even if he was the more independent one by nature. So, Sam tried to think of a world for his brother without him in it. He wasn't the only one in Dean's life who loved him, after all. "You'll still have Bobby, and Cas, if he-"

"Cas leaves."

"What?" The response was so rapid-fire that it sounded like Dean had known Sam's words were coming. Known they were coming, and then knew what happened next. Sam swallowed, suddenly very aware of just how difficult an optimistic conversation was going to be with someone who knew the future. Who had lived a future where apparently Sam was gone and Dean had learned firsthand what that was like. "When?"

Because Dean had definitely given him his death date: 2016, in a graveyard facing something called the Darkness. But there was no misjudging that look on his brother's face, even if he kept glancing off in the distance, body language subconsciously shying away from Sam. He stayed quite for a really long time, eventually going back to pulling and pushing and stretching the carpet across the floor pans. Sam let him, leaning against the fixed frame of Dean's baby.

Finally, when he'd found the right words, the man from the future morosely admitted, "We win. We stop the apocalypse, but you… You go into the cage with Lucifer."

Sam managed not to suck in that sharp breath of air his lungs tried to vacuum right up. He'd sort of figured, though the details had been off. There were really only so many ways he could bite the big one in this world Dean came from, right?

"Only way we could take him down," Dean continued, shaking his head and Sam could still see the weight of the decision he carried with him, more than five years later. "And I- I couldn't do _anything_ to get you back."

He stayed quiet as Dean kept at the carpeting, silent, angry, still grieving and still resentful over the death of a brother who was standing, very much alive, less than a foot from him. Sam stayed quiet because he knew there was more to that story, and his brother would tell him when he was ready.

"Cas got his wings back-" the broken hunter muttered, suddenly digging into the work a lot harder, a lot fiercer. It wasn't hard to hear the betrayal in his brother's voice or the anger and loss in his movements. Dean had never been a hard one to read, even ten years older. All Sam had to do was bite his tongue and try not to ask how the angel had lost his wings in the first place. "-and went back to heaven."

Well, that explained some of the roller coaster of emotion he'd seen in Dean, from that first time he'd mentioned the name in the car hightailing it out of Jericho, to just the last twenty four hours of stories, both good and bad. The way his brother clearly missed the angel, to flickers of regret when he talked about him, to the clenched teeth of frustration and bad blood, and what Sam was now realizing were the old scars of betrayal.

"I was _alone_ ," Dean spit out, still angry but still just as broken. "I tried the apple pie life, Sam. You made me promise to try, so I _did_. I went native, took a stab at normal, and I sucked at it."

It wasn't clear what made it pop into his head so readily – apparently hanging on the sidelines for weeks now, waiting to be remembered – but the first thought into Sam's head was that little boy wrapping his arms around Dean so tightly, orange light spread out beneath them in flickers of pure, roiling happiness, and the brunette, lounging on a picnic blanket in the Baku's dreamland. The question was out of his mouth before he had time to think about whether or not it was really the right moment to be asking his brother such an emotionally charged question.

"Lisa and Ben Braeden," Dean confirmed with a nod and a flicker of a smile, his previously brutal efforts against the carpet stalling as memories flickered across his face. They seemed as happy as they was sad, and Sam was suddenly dead certain this was about more than just some woman and her kid. "They were… They were awesome people. That kid is awesome."

And if Sam heard ' _my kid'_ , well, he doubted he was wrong.

"They took me in, put up with my shit. They…" The hunter struggled with his words, visibly swallowing back the emotion attached to them. "They're probably the only thing that kept me from eating my gun."

Sam didn't respond right away, leaning away from his brother to settle against the frame of the Impala. Dean went back to work, gentler and steadier than before. Hazel eyes stared up at the blue sky, birds passing high above, and the warm sun of a South Dakota late spring. Sam thought about a life for his brother with a beautiful woman and a son who loved him. A life that didn't have Sam in it, but wasn't all bad.

"Dean," he began softly, neck still craned back and eyes focused on that endless blue and, maybe, the Heaven that lay beyond. He thought about not saying it, about how it would sound to anyone not in their life. But this was his brother, and he deserved to hear it. "If eating a bullet keeps you from bring me back…"

The sounds of labor slowed before stopping completely. Sam pushed off the car, turning to face him fully. Dean's eyes were unreadable, fiercely locked on his brother, giving away nothing but the intensity of whatever that emotion was.

"I don't want to die. I don't want _you_ to die," Sam emphasized, shoving his hands in his pockets, gangly arms bent at the elbow. "I'd rather you go find Lisa and your son. Or tell Cas to screw Heaven and stay."

He thought he caught a light huff from the statue of a man, but Sam couldn't say if that was in response to calling Ben as he saw it, or telling an angel to suck it. Didn't matter, either way; at least he knew his brother was hearing him.

"If it means not bringing me back, not starting the apocalypse, or you going to _Hell_ …" Sam was not above turning on those puppy eyes his brother so famously gave him crap for, and he used them here to their full, pleading extent. "I'd rather you be in Heaven with me, than both of us here, starting the end of the world."

When Dean didn't say anything, just turned away painfully slowly to stare out the windshield again, Sam sighed, adding, "I know it's not what you want to hear-"

"No, it sure as hell isn't, Sammy," Dean interrupted, voice cracking as he did so, but something in that tone screamed hurting, not angry, so Sam stayed quiet until those watery green eyes finally found him again. "But you're not wrong. It's probably what I _need_ to hear."

He took in a deep, measured breath, sitting back on the newly buffed leather, hands on his thighs. Despite providing no upper body support, those arms somehow looked like they were the only thing keeping him holding on.

"I promise."

It came with no fanfare. Dean went back to work almost before the final syllable was out, as if he hadn't spoken to begin with. It left Sam standing there for a solid thirty seconds, wondering if he hallucinated it.

But then Dean was talking again, tucking the last of the carpet into the corner of the rear driver's side door, trimming the edges with his box cutter. "I won't bring you back if it happens." He tossed the scraps of material through the far side door, a chunk catching Sam in the thigh (very much on purpose, he was certain). "But I'm not letting it happen."

Sam offered a hand to his brother, who took it readily and clambered out of the car. Dean dusted off his hands on filthy jeans while Sam offered a weak smile.

"I'm not letting it happen either," he agreed with firm resolution. "Trust me, I'd rather stay alive, avoid the entire scenario."

The man from the future nodded, the set in his shoulders as stubborn as his brother's. "Right. What are you doing, slacking off while I do all the work? Back to it. Mush! Let's see how you did with the engine."

With an eye roll, Sam let the change of topic slide and followed him around to the front of the car.

-o-o-o-

Dean declared the Impala done the next day. It could not have come fast enough, in Dean's opinion. Not only to get his Baby back in gleaming condition, but also to be done with the open-wound that was telling Sam whatever the hell he wanted to know. It had been ninety six hours of pain and bad memories.

Well, that wasn't completely true. Sam had asked about as many happy times as he had awful ones. Dean told him all about Jo and Ellen, that he'd get to meet them soon enough, whenever Ellen called so they'd have an excuse to go to the Roadhouse. He told him about Ash in all his mulleted glory, Charlie the redheaded little sister they never knew they wanted, Jody and her kids and that damn awkward dinner they'd shared over Alex's apparent soon-to-be-popped cherry.

Sam couldn't quite wrap his head around how much of a _family_ they were going to have.

Once Baby was up and purring, a quick test run under her belt for groceries and celebratory beer, Dean declared the rest of the day free from work of any kind. Which, apparently, meant they were waiting for the following day to find a suitable building for the summoning. Sam, who was looking forward to meeting the Cas of Dean's stories but still very much on the fence about the actual angel they'd be meeting in the next twenty four hours, didn't fight much. He could use a free evening to do some more research (which went nowhere once Dean saw what he was doing, confiscated the laptop, hid it where Sam never did find it, and plopped a freshly opened beer in front of him instead, declaring a night of celebration, not _work.)_

Bobby, again, asked why they needed to find another location to begin with. Not that he was actually opposed to summoning Castiel elsewhere. In fact, if Dean hadn't said anything, the old man would probably have protested bringing an angel to his house in the first place. What he was caught up on was the fact that Dean insisted they find someplace _safer_ , which, for the paranoid hunter, was just insulting.

There was no place _safer_.

Insult aside, the need for security more extreme than Bobby's panic room and heavily warded house was worrying. He wasn't the only one thinking it, either. Sam's harried glances his way confirmed that the younger Winchester had picked up on it too.

Dean just skirted the question, saying angels tended to make big entrances and he didn't think Bobby wanted to deal with home insurance claims for lightning strikes _inside_ the house. The look the two had exchanged after _that_ bit of information damn near broke the apprehension scale.

So they spent the evening watching movies on Bobby's old TV, the three of them comically squished on the couch together (after Dean declared the desk chair unsuitable for movie night, given that it squeaked every time the gruff hunter leaned back). They had a near endless supply of beer, popcorn, and a dinner break for burgers on the grill with all the fixings. Sam wouldn't lie, it was the most fun he'd had in months, and it went a long way to soothe the hollow weight in his chest. It was a twisted combo of the mountain of death and destruction looming on the horizon, the ache in his veins still fading from a week of withdrawal recovery, and the still fresh loss of his father. He was pretty sure the evening was as much a balm for his brother as it was for him, so the studious hunter let himself relax and enjoyed the company of the family he still had left.

-o-o-o-

The next day they began the hunt for Dean's perfect summoning building, roaming around the outskirts of the Sioux Falls area in search of something the man from the future deemed worthy, all the while testing Baby's new build and reassembled engine. She purred like a charm all over the county as they darted from one abandoned farmhouse to the next. Dean crossed a lot of them unnecessarily off the list, giving vague, half-formed reasons for why they didn't fit the bill. Bullshit, in Bobby's opinion, but Sam seemed more willing to go along with his brother, who thought this summoning had to meet very specific qualifications.

Bobby was pretty sure he was just procrastinating, but what did he know?

Dean insisted they were looking for something he would know when he saw it (and apparently only he, given just how many dilapidated warehouses, farms, barns, and houses, they visited in the span of one day). The sun was back on the decline by the time Sam finally had enough and called Dean on his hedging. As it just so happened, their fearless leader found the very next building they pulled up to perfect for an angel summoning. Sam rolled his eyes, Dean played it off like this was his intent the entire time, and Bobby grumbled about how he should have stayed at the house, where he could have been as equally useless to this endeavor and at least gotten his own shit done for the day. He had bills and a life, after all.

Both he and Sam stayed in the car for the last building search, having seen too many old, falling apart structures for one lifetime, let alone one day. As Dean walked back towards the car, a smile on his face and thumbs up, Sam and Bobby started climbing out of the Impala. But the man from the future just shook his head and climbed back into the driver's seat before either man was fully out of the car

With a curious frown, Sam clambered back in, giving Bobby another thing to grump about. He was too old to be squished in the back seat of this damn muscle car. Sam, on the other hand, was staring at his brother as he started up the engine and pulled away from the building he'd just ( _finally_ ) deemed worthy.

"We're leaving?"

"Can't summon him right now," Dean replied, following the long dirt road back to civilization. "It's the middle of the day. We gotta wait till night."

The reasoning was twofold. And by that, he meant there was one reason, mostly fabricated, he was willing to tell his brother and Bobby, and one far more legitimate reason he was keeping to himself. The first was that it had been night when he and Bobby originally summoned the angel, and since Time was a picky bitch, they should stick as closely to the original summoning as possible. Dean had even played around with the idea of driving out to Pontiac in search of that old barn, just to give the bitch even less reason to mess this up for them. But he'd decided that was a waste of gas, ultimately, even if the extra day of driving to get there was a tempting excuse to put it off one more day.

He was _nervous_ about this, damn it, which was just ridiculous. It was _Cas_ , for Pete's sake.

"Is _that_ why the building had to be so specific?" Sam asked once Dean offered up reason numero uno on why they needed such precise conditions for the summoning. The taller of the two brothers rolled his eyes, exasperated that his brother couldn't have just _said so_. He'd wasted half the day stalling, was what he'd really done.

"I summoned yer angel with you?" Bobby asked over Sam's grievances, giving Dean a wide eyed look in the rear view mirror.

"Uh…Yes, and yes. Though, you were unconscious for most of it." Dean winced as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and Bobby's eyes rose even higher. "Don't worry, I'm sure he won't knock you out this time."

The two once more overlapped their replies, exclamations ranging from 'what the hell, boy, I thought yer angel was on our side!' to 'You said he wasn't dangerous in that sense, Dean.' The hunter just shrugged, pulling onto the highway leading back to Bobby's house.

"He will be on our side. But he doesn't start that way. And he's not _my_ angel."

But Sam was hardly focused on that little detail (and, also, _yeah right_ ). Instead, he shook his head, eyes wide, as he realized something he hadn't before, even with everything Dean had told him about Cas starting out on the wrong side of things. His mind drifted to the container of holy oil Pastor Jim had supplied them, and suddenly he wondered what exactly it was for.

"Are we…. Are we summoning Cas against his will?"

Dean fidgeted in the driver's seat, a surefire tell that yes, yes they were. "He isn't answering my prayers. This is the only other way."

"Prayers?" Sam echoed at the same time as Bobby went back to his grumblings, only this time they were a series of increasingly descriptive expletives.

The old hunter finally harrumphed, arms crossed in the back seat, quickly realizing he was missing some key pieces of information back there. "Exactly how dangerous is this?"

"If everything goes according to plan?" Dean glanced sidelong at his brother, then back on the road. "Not at all."

"And if it doesn't go to plan?" Bobby asked gruffly, because when in hell had anything having to do with the Winchesters _ever_ gone to plan? And he was asking, knowingly, years before the Apocalypse would join that list of things.

"Uh…" Dean's silence was answer enough, really. "He could kill us all?"

Sam and Bobby exchanged alarmed expressions. Dean hadn't mentioned _that_ on their way back from Blue Earth. The intelligent, near-college-graduate was very certain Dean's worst case scenario had still involved them all living through it.

"He won't though. It's more likely he'll go back to heaven and tattle-tale. Which would be worse, because it'll be Zachariah he'll report to, and that pompous bag of dicks won't hesitate to serve us all up on a silver platter."

The alarmed expression on Bobby's face became something closer to panic. No, maybe not panic. Hell no? That was it. It was definitely an expression that had once been _"uh….kaaaay"_ and was now _"oh, Hell no. No, no, nope, no way, just no."_

"We, uh…. We sure this is the right move?" the old hunter asked cautiously, dread in his voice manifesting itself into several dozen angry, silent ' _idjits'_. Sam couldn't blame him. He'd had a week of knowing all of this, and he _still_ wasn't sure it was a good idea.

At least Dean was being honest about it, for once.

"We're gonna need him eventually," Dean reasoned back, releasing the wheel to rub at his sternum. "Besides, I want answers. God wouldn't give 'em up-" or if he had, then he took them away right afterward, the bastard- "so what choice do we have?"

"We could chose _life_ ," Bobby grumbled miserably from the back seat.

"Don't worry." Dean settled his hand back on the steering wheel, eyes focused straight ahead. "The plan is going to work."

And if it didn't, he could probably talk his way out of it. Not that that ever worked any other time in his life, of course. Dean was much better talking his way _into_ trouble. But the one exception to that rule was Castiel. And given the warmth slowly building back up in his chest ever since the explosion, Dean was willing to bet that being three years early wasn't going to change it.

Which brought up the real reason for waiting until nightfall to summon Cas. If this did, for some reason, go tits up, the fallout was gonna be major. His only hope of containment would be trapping Cas before he could make the run back to Heaven. Hence, Pastor Jim's holy oil. Which could very likely piss the angel off, resulting in Plan C not exactly going to plan.

Honestly, despite Dean's confident words, there were a million ways this could go wrong. Castiel had been a company man before he met Dean. Towed the line, thumped that bible, believed in the Plan. Worse, he believed his superiors were still getting updates on that Plan from God, and not just going off script for their own glorification and means to an end.

If he wasn't able to convince Cas that he was from the future, that the angel's future should be with him and his brother, that his place was by their side rather than in Heaven, then they were going to have a very serious problem.

But since he hadn't gotten any help from God, there was still a bubbling warmth in his chest that should _really_ be concerning him, and he was pretty sure he couldn't do the rest of this alone anymore without losing his mind (given that his dad's inevitable death was all it had taken for him to run off and _dare_ God to start participating or else), it was time to call for backup. He had questions that needed answering, and they all needed someone a little more familiar with the rules. Dean was at the end of his rope trying to figure this out misstep by misstep.

Plus, he missed his friend; he couldn't deny that.

So, there they were, several hours later, a little nuclear family of odds and ends, misfits and outliers, about to summon their missing member into a ring of holy fire and hoping – not praying, but _hoping_ – he wouldn't smite them for their efforts.

Okay, maybe Dean sent up one, itsy, bitsy, little prayer before he lit the match.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns:**_ _Could we finally – FINALLY, ACTUALLY – be getting Cas?_

 _You know, as long as he answers the summons… ;D_

 _(say it with me: no-good, dirty, rotten author. No, no, this time I swear, we're actually getting him)_


	43. Season 2: Chapter 10

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns:** Okay, couple of things. First, this chapter ended up being 29 pages long (almost three times the length of our usual chapters) because I'm friggin' verbose. I had to split it up, and I'm not happy about it. There's a character twist that spans both parts and should really be read together. However, I ran out of editing time this week and absolutely could not decide if I should hold off another week to post both chapters at once, or post this today. So here's the deal; You get part I now, and I'll post part II as soon as I finish editing it, rather than making you all wait a week._

 _Until then…uh…nobody freak out._

 _ **-Freak Out**? Yeah, about that. Welcome to the first of two planned Story-Twists-That-Make-the-Author-Incredibly-Nervous. Oh, what fun we'll have. What I ask is that you don't completely freak out (if you're going to freak out) until you get to the author's notes at the end of Part II. I have (what I think are) very good reasons for this twist, so hopefully you give me the chance to explain!_

 _Actually, three readers have already sort of meandered into it accidentally into their awesome reviews, which has made me feel so much freaking better about springing it on y'all. I think you all will understand why immediately, but [insert self-conscious shrug] I'm a paranoid people-pleaser who's terrified you're gonna hate it._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings** : We FINALLY get Castiel! Which means we FINALLY get the first splashes of Destiel! Don't get too excited, it's not too much more than the show has at this point ;) Our boy's still knee-deep (more like neck-deep) in the good ole' river De-Nile._

 _For those of you who are not Destiel Fans but have stuck with us this far, keep sticking! I promise, we're still in slow-burn territory and, outside of Sammy and Bobby poking fun, we will be for some time._

 _- **Actual Chapter Warnings** : Light innuendos and implications of pre-slash Destiel, along with some chick-flick moments, a little pectoral fondling, and a lot of Dean trying his hardest to ignore those things. Oh, and a lot of swearing as Dean realizes something kinda important._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 10

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Summoning an angel was, perhaps, the most anticlimactic experience of Sam's life. That may only be because he'd certainly built up the confrontation in his mind, what with Dean's procrastinating, nervous fidgeting the entire time they set up the barn, and Sam's own doubts about Castiel being on their side, despite Dean's many reassurances that he was – would be – their best friend and they couldn't do this without him. Despite of all that, or perhaps because of it, Sam was rapidly losing regard for any danger this angel apparently posed, considering they were going on hour two with no sign of him.

"Are you sure you did the ritual right?" he asked Bobby, a slight whine in his voice. The look the old man shot him wasn't nice, and Sam grimaced apologetically.

"Relax, guys," Dean said from his spot on one of the only surviving pieces of furniture in the barn; an old farm table with one missing leg that they'd propped up with mildewing hay bales. The bowl of spell ingredients sat beside him, flames long since burnt out and smoky scent of singed herbs gone from the musty air. Dean swung his legs back and forth like a four year old, twirling a knife into the tabletop and digging himself a decent little hole (like an adult with the maturity of a four year old). "He's gotta find a vessel. It'll be a while."

Which was reason three to summon the guy at night, actually. If Jimmy was asleep, Cas would probably have an easier time visiting him and convincing the guy to say yes. Of course, even adding buffer time of Cas having to find a vessel kinda last minute (Dean figured Cas had had a couple of days of trying to communicate with Dean before giving up and searching for a vessel last time), this was still way longer and Dean was starting to worry the angel wasn't coming.

The spell he'd used an hour and twenty minutes ago didn't demand the angel's presence so much as strongly suggest he should show up. Dean knew how to strengthen the summons to one that could not be ignored, but he was hesitant to do so. They'd used that method when he and Cas had bullied Raphael into showing his ugly mug during the apocalypse, which had unpleasant memories enough. However, Cas had warned him at the time that such a thing was just rude in heavenly society, and therefore a surefire way to piss an angel off.

Castiel was already going to be not-very-happy to hear about the upcoming apocalypse and Heaven's role in it. Then there'd be the whole holy fire bit, too. Dean really wanted to reduce any other factors likely to piss off the nerd angel.

"Well, how long is that gonna take?" Bobby asked, huffing in annoyance as he mindlessly tapped the shotgun laid out across his legs, despite the fact that Dean told him he wouldn't need it. No hunter was dumb enough to go into a situation unarmed, no matter what that situation was. "Should we leave a note?"

Dean rolled his eyes at the sarcastic suggestion, but even his patience was starting to wear.

"So…" Sam shifted awkwardly against the old barrel he'd dragged into the center of the room once he'd realized this was going to be a while. "He's going to show up possessing someone?"

Dean immediately got the unease in his brother's voice. He hadn't been a big fan of the angelic method of visiting Earth much himself, though nowadays (or…er…future-a-days) it was such a commonplace thing that he stopped thinking twice about it years ago.

"It's voluntary," he supplied, hoping to ease the kid's conscience a bit even as his own started perking up. "Angels have to get permission to enter a vessel."

"What poor SOB says yes to being possessed?" Bobby snorted derisively, shaking his head at the prospect. Dean just shrugged.

"A religious one, apparently."

Sammy wasn't looking any more comfortable with the idea, and Bobby let out another disbelieving huff. "And what? They forfeit up their life to be some angel condom until the thing's done with its grand ole' tour of Earth?"

"Or till the humans kicks 'em to the curb," the man from the future offered with another shrug, but the movement was tense, shoulders hunched forward and his words a bit too clipped to be as relaxed as he'd been going for. The hunter was unaware of the defensive body language and growing aggression in his tones, but he was getting antsy as they stayed on the subject of vessels.

Or maybe it was just Bobby referring to angels as things (and yeah, alright, Dean probably would have referred to about 99% of that population in a similar manner, but it was the 1% currently poking his conscience with a stick.)

"Are they awake? Like demonic possession?" Sam was staring at him, eyes somehow wide with curiosity while simultaneously filled with mounting worry. He was clearly upset by the idea. He'd never been possessed – not in this timeline – but he had seen the victims ( _survivors_ ) and he knew their horrific recounts of seeing everything, feeling everything, but having no control over their own bodies.

"For parts of it, I think." Having never actually served as a vessel, Dean couldn't speak from personal experience. However, he remembered Jimmy Novak's opinion of angelic possession well enough, along with his relieved desperation to be over and done with it. "They can't shield all of it, but I know Cas tried with Jimmy. Guy said it was like being strapped to a comment."

"Jimmy?"

"Cas's vessel," Dean responded to his brother, but his words were distant, distracted. His brain was busy thinking about all the other angelic vessels he'd met over the years, but he couldn't come up with a single one outside of Jimmy that they'd actually talked to. Which was pretty incredible, given how many angels they'd met. How many they had killed. Sweat was breaking out across Dean's palms as he counted back through each angelic encounter he'd had. That _any_ of them had had. The body count of vessels, innocent humans who said yes to serve what was a just and noble cause in their minds, was piling high. Higher than he should ever have let it.

The only two he'd known to survive their ordeals were Jimmy, who they'd talked to the one time he'd gotten away, and that poor son of a bitch Raphael had possessed. Jimmy ended up forced back into servitude to save his family, who had been _hunted by demons_ the minute he earned his freedom, and in the end he'd died a vessel as well. Blown up by an archangel. Never mind the other guy, who ended up comatose in a hospital. And that poor SOB would be lucky if he died peacefully in that place and not under the blade of some demon seeking information he couldn't even process after the angelic lobotomy he'd survived.

Quite suddenly, Dean couldn't get enough air.

"So…this Jimmy guy is going to offer up his body because _we're_ summoning Castiel?" It wasn't the only thing Sam asked, unease winning over his natural curiosity as he let lose a barrage of questions Dean was barely hearing. "You said Cas was still with you in _2016_. That's- that's _ten years_ from now. Does he even know what he's getting into?"

Dean wasn't paying attention, though. His brain was stuck on a single thought that, once thought, couldn't be un-thought.

 _Claire_.

"Dean?"

Claire Novak. That badass woman warrior, that pain in his ass kid, that beautiful young lady who had grown from a life of pain and ugly into something truly awesome. Dean loved her, like a daughter-baby sister combo. Like he'd loved Ben; like he'd loved Jo. Like he'd loved _Charlie_. Even if Claire tried to drive him (and Jody and Cas) up a tree _and_ grey on a monthly (sometimes weekly) basis. That incredible young woman who was becoming one hell of a hunter under his (and, yeah, fine, okay, Jody and Cas') tutelage. The girl who was hell bent on hunting down the supernatural baddies of the world and saving people, like she hadn't been saved, when an angel came and took her father from her. When her mother followed after in a foolish attempt to get him back. When she was left an orphaned teenager, jumping from foster homes to detention centers, running from deadbeats to douchebags looking for a family to fix the one she'd lost.

All because Castiel had taken her dad from her.

Shit.

Shit shit _shit shit shit!_

Dean couldn't breathe. He'd just rung the dinner bell, invited the angel to take Claire's father from her _again_. Years earlier, actually. She'd been, what, ten, eleven the first time? Great, now she'd lose Jimmy at _eight_.

What the fuck had he been thinking?

He was taking away a kid's – an amazing kid's – childhood, ruining it and setting her up for a shit future of hurting and hunting and loneliness. Even with Jody and Alex making up their odd but endearing little family, even with Cas and Claire forming some sort of awkward friendship in the face of her missing father, even with Sam and Dean there whenever she needed them, none of that could ever make up for an honest to God childhood, a loving mother and father, school and homework, first dates and prom and friends; a _normal life_.

No one deserved the road of a hunter, not if it was preventable, and Dean could have damn well prevented it by leaving Cas out of all of this.

God, his chest hurt just thinking it, and he knew he couldn't follow through. He _needed_ Cas; he could not do this alone. He'd reached the end of his rope, and he'd spent enough years hunting and facing down ends of the world to know when he was out of his depth and in need of help. But he couldn't take Claire's father – her childhood – away from her, either. Not if there was an alternative.

 _Son of a bitch._

They were going to have to find Castiel a different vessel. Someone who wouldn't leave behind a kid, a family or loved ones who would miss him when he followed the Winchesters to the end of the world.

"Son of a bitch!" he swore, ferociously, just under his breath.

Sam didn't have a chance to question the sudden exclamation, though worry and irritation was written clearly across the wrinkles of Dean's brow, because of course, _of course_ , the single working light in the barn chose that moment to start flickering, and the wooden slats making up what was left of the roof above them began rattling in the building wind.

-o-o-o-

Both Sam and Bobby had their guns up and trained on the barn door. Dean jumped off the makeshift table, heart thumping against his ribcage so loud he was sure the other two could hear it. He stepped up between them, eyeing his brother's handgun and Bobby's shotgun with trepidation.

"Don't shoot him," he said suddenly, eyes and words desperate as he met Sam's confused brown gaze over the curve of his shoulder. Dean licked his lips nervously. Cas could take a bullet or a shotgun blast, but what about Jimmy? He could just heal him, heal his vessel, right? Still, Dean was suddenly really uncomfortable with testing that theory.

He'd never been so happy to have lost the Colt.

Even if the normal guns couldn't hurt him, there was the slim chance that shooting him would piss him off and he might take flight before they could stop him. What if he left with Jimmy, back to Heaven? What if Claire lost her father extra permanent this time because he was a fucking thoughtless idiot?

Of course, a knife straight to the heart hadn't exactly translated into ' _fly away!'_ for the angel last time. At that time, though, Cas had been on a mission from God, not summoned without explanation in the middle of apparent 'peace times.'

Dean settled his hand atop the site of his brother's gun. He didn't put any pressure in the grip, didn't force him to lower the weapon or try take it away, but the gesture was clear. "Just don't shoot, alright?"

Sam looked loathe to acquiesce to that, but he gave a hesitant nod all the same. His gun lowered a couple inches, but he kept it gripped tightly between his hands, still held out in front of him. Bobby had no such reservations, shotgun tucked securely into his shoulder and raised right on the door. He wouldn't shoot unless whatever they'd summoned gave him reason to, and Dean just had to pray an overly prideful, slightly dick angel wasn't reason enough.

The wind was picking up, the barn doors rattling in the howling gusts, the roof shaking above them, dust and bits of rotted wood shaking loose to rain down on them. The single light gave a high pitch, electrical whine before it exploded spectacularly, glass tinkering to the straw-hewed ground.

All three hunters jumped at the flare and shattering glass, the barn falling dark around them. Lighting struck outside, blue-white light flashing through the barn, illuminating their silhouettes against the dark backdrop.

There definitely hadn't been a storm in the forecast for tonight.

"Balls," Bobby breathed out against the butt of the shotgun, grip tightening on the trigger and barrel. Dean cast him a precautionary look, but the old hunter wasn't watching and he probably wouldn't have bothered responding even if he had.

Castiel's entrance was just as dramatic as the first time. The doors burst inward with another brilliant flash of lightening. The smell of ozone and charged electrons filled the barn. Hay and dirt swept across the floor beneath their feet, swirling about in the tumultuous winds that only settled once the angel crossed the threshold of the old barn.

Bobby adjusted his grip on the gun in warning, but the man that entered the barn was oblivious to the very clear threat. His fervent blue eyes were locked solely on Dean and did not stray. The older Winchester's hand was still resting atop Sam's gun, and the young hunter struggled not to raise it back up to train on the thing now in the building with them.

Dean had been half right with his Holy Tax Accountant description. He'd gotten the tan trench coat, dark, messy hair, and intensely blue eyes dead on. Sam was pretty sure the navy and white striped pajama bottoms and old grey t-shirt were a little more off-menu than normal for the stoic angel, though. The fuzzy maroon slippers _definitely_ were.

Despite the unintimidating form, the being they'd summoned in front of them, now strolling toward them, was powerful. The air damn near crackled with it, his gaze all but glowed from it, and every step closer might as well have been accompanied by individual lighting strikes for all the charge in the wide open space.

It was suddenly not hard to believe this wind-swept, slipper-wearing, tax accountant was an angel on mission from God himself. Especially not when he locked that unwavering, single-minded focus on his older brother.

"Dean," Sam breathed out, the name half question, half warning. Every muscle in his body screamed to shoot it. Black hair, and the bluest eyes he'd ever seen. Just like Missouri Moseley said, and suddenly he couldn't quite get over how much sense it made for Dean to be afraid of this thing. Sam's grip on the barrel of his gun only tightened and, against every instinct his life and father had trained or bullied into him, he took his eyes off of that powerful creature to look at his big brother.

There was something heartbreakingly hopeful in his gaze, locked as surely on the angel as the gaze he was receiving back, and Sam found himself lowering his gun before his brain could protest in a voice that sounded a hell of a lot like John Winchester.

Castiel stopped several feet from them, ethereal eyes finally moving to the other men in the room and carrying the weight of Heaven behind them. In response to that intensity sweeping over both of them, the two men not from the future nor familiar with the supernatural badass standing in front of them, stiffened under the inspection. With weapons drawn, game faces on, shoulders up, they presented a formidable wall of strength and intimidation for any of the supernatural community.

Except, perhaps, the angel standing before them.

"Why have you summoned me?" Castiel asked, and Sam blinked, surprised at the deep voice. He hadn't expected the holy tax accountant in front of him or the guy his brother described to have a voice that gargled gravel every morning and smoked three packs a day.

Metal clicked and Sam looked over Dean in time to see him raise a lighter, thumb flicking the wheel and spark igniting.

"Sorry about this, Cas."

The flame danced through the air as the Zippo fell to the straw-strewn dirt beneath them. All three hunters stepped back – two hurriedly and one regretfully – as flames leapt to life, tracing a circle of oil poured long before the angel it encased had arrived. The heat was strong, far stronger than a normal fire would produce, and Sam and Bobby staggered another half step away, leaving Dean standing out to confront the suddenly stormy angel alone.

Although Castiel did not move, the way he canted his head to gaze at the circle around him gave off the impression of a predator all but stalking the flames in a slow circle. Sam could feel more than see just how close Bobby was to shooting him out of pure instinctual need. The way those now fierce eyes settled back on his brother, Sam could hardly blame the older hunter. There was the Warrior of God his brother had spoken of, and he had _not_ done him near enough justice in his descriptions or his warnings.

Castiel's eyes flared angrily at the man – men – imprisoning him. The circle was wide, far larger than they should have made it, giving him the freedom to move without risk to his wings. A mistake they would regret, he would make sure of it as soon as he found the weakness in this entrapment.

"What is this?" that deep voice boomed. Bobby swore under his breath and Sam struggled not to take another step away from the low, seething outcry that was followed by a flash of lightning from _inside_ the barn. Shadows tore up the old walls and Sam did stumble back as the darkness took the shape of huge, looming wings.

Shit, Missouri Mosely had it right all along. This guy was worth fearing. Sam had never encountered power like that, nor presence. His eyes alone said it all, and Sam now understood the awe in the psychic's voice when she'd described them.

Dean hardly seemed phased, though, and Sam tried to find his own resolve in that. Just the way his brother stood there, looking half a second from cracking open a cold one with a shrug as he discussed the pros and cons of various machete brands, the expression on his face more annoyed at the dick show of power than intimidated by it in the slightest. That, or given the nervousness he'd been displaying all week, it was one hell of a good mask. Sam could not deny the impressiveness of either one, since he was embarrassingly close to needing a new pair of pants.

"We need to talk," his older brother spoke firmly, the listen-to-me-if-you-want-to-live hunter voice cranked to full-power.

In reality, despite his Dean-perfected disinterested façade, the man from the future was pretty much right there with his brother in terms of needing a change of clothes, although his was less from fear of the impressive being in front of them so much as what was riding on Dean not fucking this up. A.K.A. their entire future and the end of the world. No pressure. It was not helping that he had forgotten how much of a dick First-Time-Cas could be (he really hadn't, but he might have been a little too hopeful thinking maybe he'd exaggerated the memories over the years).

Castiel's eyes narrowed at the obstinate human standing before him. The man who had prayed to him relentlessly for months, more often than not impertinent in his demands. For whom he had broken Heaven's rules, in part to fulfil a misplaced curiosity. A choice that had led to the death of his brother and friend.

"Who are you to command me?" the angel challenged, once more eyeing the flames at his feet, looking for the weakness or error that would allow his escape. This time, he would be reporting his infraction to Heaven right alongside this ridiculous and unheard of behavior of a hunter summoning and imprisoning an angel of the Lord.

Dean huffed in response, the sound as incredulous as it was genuinely amused. Staring at his best friend – or the guy he hoped would once more become his closest friend, ally, _family_ – the hunter couldn't help himself. "I'm Dean Friggin' Winchester."

The angel looked unimpressed, expression unchanging from the intense, near blank wall of stone that was Old-Testament Cas. Pre-Winchester-Gospel Cas. Dean could only internally shrug. Future Cas would have thought that was pretty damn amusing.

"This's my brother, Sam, and our friend, Bobby," he said instead, pointing over his shoulder at his brother and jerking his head towards his surrogate father, who was looking mighty twitchy with that shotgun. Realizing the current conversation needed to start going places, lest Bobby get an itchy trigger finger, Dean pulled his game face on. "Look, Cas-"

"That is not my name," the angel returned immediately, and Dean couldn't stop his eyes from rolling (so much for game face).

" _Castiel_ ," he bitched back with emphasis that had the angel tilting his head ever so slightly to the side. "Happy?"

Those blue eyes narrowed again, which seemed to be answer enough that no, he was not happy. Dean couldn't help but think _his_ Cas would have pointedly slid his gaze to the flames, with all the sass and eyebrow action that came from being a Winchester.

"Look, I'm sorry for summoning you and for the, you know, holy oil," Dean conceded with a glance at the flickering fire, which Castiel matched with one of his own, albeit it was a far more cautious, infuriated gaze. He'd kind of hoped the extra large ring would maybe be seen as the peace offering it was. But, yeah, considering it was still one hundred percent imprisonment, no matter the leg room, he'd known it had been a pipe dream kind of hope. "Trust me, it's as much for your protection as ours."

"I am an angel of the Lord," Cas answered, drawing up to his full height, which seemed so much more than the six feet of vertical space he actually occupied. "I do not need your _protection_."

Damn, but was Castiel bitchier than he remembered. Memory wasn't exactly the most reliable of the senses, Dean knew that better than anyone, but maybe he had gone into this relying a little too heavily on what he thought he knew. This wasn't his Cas, though. This wasn't even the Castiel he'd first met. That angel had raised him from Hell, fought through fire and demon alike to raise the Righteous Man because he honestly believed, with everything he was, that he was doing God's good bidding.

This angel had just been pulled down from Heaven on an unwarranted summoning and trapped in something that could very easily kill him if he so much as _tripped_.

Dean bit down on the edge of his tongue as he stared at this proud, angry, and honestly confused angel with a sudden lack of understanding and utter uncertainty. Well crap. He kinda hadn't factored this totally predictable can of worms into the conversation, and now had no clue how to proceed.

"I need you to look at me," he blurted out, wincing as soon as he'd said it, but also knowing there was no way he was taking it back, chick-flick meter maxing out at 10 or not. The whole point of summoning Cas into a ring of holy oil was to get him up to speed, and that wasn't gonna happen by _talking_. "Really look at me, Cas….tiel."

The angel continued staring at him, unblinking. After a long moment of silence, the barn so deathly quiet but for the crackle of burning oil, Dean let out an annoyed growl.

"My soul, Cas." He couldn't help but roll his eyes at his entirely too literal friend. "Look at my soul."

Bobby made an immediately distressed sound cleverly disguised as disgruntled, shotgun still sharp in his shoulder and pointed straight at the angel. He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a warning of, " _boy_ ," but Dean only held his hand out to the side and tried to back him down with a small flapping motion. He never took his eyes off the angel, whose gaze had settled directly on the hunter's chest. Dean tried not to squirm under the scrutiny of a guy who could see clear through him. Hell, who he'd just asked to see clear through him.

Cas tilted his head to the side suddenly, a light frown pinching his eyebrows together in a move so fucking familiar as to be physically painful for the man from the future. "You are not from this time."

He could hear the shuffle behind him, the deep intake of quite breaths from the rest of his family and, yeah, okay, that was fair. It was one thing to suspect your brother was from the future, another to hear him admit to it, and an entirely new experience to have some stranger confirm it in what was practically the first words out of his mouth.

"Deeper," he ground out because damn it, he already knew that part ( _you're the one that did it, assbutt.)_ What he needed Cas to see, what he himself needed to know, was buried beneath that. _You already know the truth, Dean, you just want to hear it from someone who's not a demon)_ ( _whoa, déjà vu…God damn it, God! Come on!_ )

Dean pulled out of his internal ranting at friggin' primordial, all-powerful, memory thieves to look back at his angel just as Cas's eyes snapped up to lock on his, wide as he had ever seen them. The celestial creature took a step back out of shock, which might as well have been a rock stepping out of the way for an ant, as Dean well knew what it took to physically move something like Castiel when he didn't want to be moved.

"H-How?" the angel asked and Dean already knew. He'd always known, damn it.

"It's grace, isn't it?"

Castiel's searching eyes darted between his own, then down to his chest, and it was all the confirmation he really didn't need. Dean caught the way Castiel's hand twitched at his side, raised for only a moment towards him – to touch his chest, to connect with that grace that was surely his – but he pulled back when the heat of the flames reached his vessel's skin.

Watching the angel watch his soul, the paradox of heart-aching familiarity and the possibility of the completely unknown, Dean made a stupid decision and he made it easily. With two steps, he was through the flames and within the circle of oil, coming face to face with his angel. Castiel didn't move even an inch (of course he didn't), bringing them almost chest to chest.

Oh well, like Dean wasn't uncomfortably used to having no personal space around the guy, even after years of trying to teach him the difference. He tried to ignore the heat that crawled up his back, having nothing to do with the burning holy oil, at the thought of Sam and Bobby seeing it for the first time all over again, though.

Of course, given their cries of surprise and cursing, respectively, along with the shuffle of a second gun joining Bobby's, trained on the scary-ass, unknown, soul-reading creature Dean had just put himself flush up against, the awkward intimacy of the situation was probably not what his family was worrying about so much.

Castiel wasted no time, raising his hand and splaying his palm across Dean's t-shirt, encompassing as much space across his pectorals as he could ( _Damn it, should have done this alone. Fuck Sam and his dynamic duo, the last thing this utter chick-flick moment needed was a god damn_ _audience)_ The angel's hand was warm – no, scratch that, his hand was _hot_ , and holy shit it was like the warmth that had been in his chest for months now was doing backflips now that it was so close to its actual owner. It was like butterflies in his god damn heart and no, fuck you very much, he was not going to read into that, shut up.

Dean had to swallow hard – way harder than he should have had to, damn it, he was _fine_ – as he watched Cas's face, those blue eyes widening as the connection instantly formed between them at the physical contact. (And, yeah, no way the angel wasn't feeling it, what with the way his eyes were practically glowing and he looked more freaked than he had at that brothel.)

"It's yours," he said with a rough voice and then practically choked on the words. That heat flaring up his backside friggin' quadrupled. Shit, that was not something he ever expected – meant – to say, especially to another dude. Especially to another dude while his heart was doing backflips and front flips and sideways flips in his chest while butterflies danced around his rib cage like it was a god damn midsummer night's dream ( _What, he reads (besides, they made a movie of that one.)_ )

And he absolutely did not hear a stupid school girl in a dumbass skirt and a dumbass beret, with a dumbass, smug smirk on her face as she winks at him and says _'Subtext!'_

Fuckity fuck fucking _fuck_. This was ridiculous is what it was. Still, he didn't move away from that hand and he really kind of hated himself for it. Just a bit.

"Cas?"

The angel finally took a step back, pulling away and looking just as damn reluctant about it as Dean felt. His insides sunk and sagged at the loss, and the hunter rubbed at the warm skin under his t-shirt to try and diminish the weirdly hollow, disappointed feeling that he internally insisted was not his own.

"The grace is mine," Castiel confirmed, blue eyes locking on Dean's and somehow drying out his entire mouth. "However, it is not from me."

Dean could only nod. That made sense, he supposed. Still, he felt it necessary to tack on, "Not yet, anyways."

"I…I sent you through time." The angel's shoulders dropped somewhat at the confirmation-slash-admission. The mix of emotions was a muddled mess on his face as he stared at Dean's chest in both awe and utter confusion. "I do not understand."

Still, there was something about the human before him, who had sent months of prayers and blasphemies, who had entered his prison voluntarily where Castiel could kill with a single move, who carried a sliver of the angel's own grace in his chest. No, Castiel did not understand, but the ever yearning curiosity and need to understand outweighed every other logical thought in his head, and he knew he would not pass further judgment on these men without answers first.

"Explain."

The human huffed out a half laugh, but his body language immediately loosened. He was even smiling as he stepped away and to the side. It opened the angel up to the weapons the other two men carried, but Castiel was neither worried nor bothered. The firearms could not hurt him, and he suspected if they were going to attack, they would have done so already, despite the obvious uncertainty in their tense stances.

"How much time you got?" Dean asked glibly, pulling the angel's attention back to him. There was a giddiness about him, a definite mix of Castiel giving them a chance and the still fuzzy warmth beneath his sternum. "Cuz that's a long story."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/N:** Don't freak out! But do yell at me. I hate where this ended too, but I am legitimately out of time; I'm actually late to a screening of Incredibles II, posting this from a café across the street from the theatre . But my friend (and a reader/fan :D) sitting next to me waiting to go to the movie while I have a panic attack about whether or not to post just told me to friggin do the thing cuz she'd rather have Cas sooner than wait. So…blame her? Yeah, let's go with that XD_

 _I will get the next chapter and the resolution of the twist up as soon as it's been edited. Probably by Wednesday, though if you all yell at me lots you know it might happen sooner cuz excited fans may as well have me wrapped around their little pinkies -_-_

 _Cheers till the next chapter!_


	44. Season 2: Chapter 11

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns** : Thank you all for the ridiculously awesome flood of feedback to last chapter. I would have had this chapter up sooner, but this is the earliest I could do. And I should so be asleep right now . _

_**-Chapter Warnings:** Okay, so, I wrote last chapter and this chapter in the same go, and when I finally got to Castiel, I went from accidentally writing ridiculous innuendoes (not kidding, first few were totally accidental) to throwing them left and right because, screw it, I can and we've waited **forty** chapters for this, damnit! ;)_

 _So….uh… to those not Destiel Fans who I told last chapter to stick around cuz it's totally subtle…..my bad? Hopefully you enjoy the humor of Dean's entirely unfortunate situation ;)_

 _- **Actual Chapter Warnings** : Implications/Innuendos/over-the-top hinting at pre-slash Destiel, along with some serious Dean flustered-ness, and a lot more gay [insert jazz hands here]. No actual slash but, oh boy, Bobby's gonna poke some fun and Sam's starting to catch on._

 _On a less fun note…. kind of one hell of a cliffhanger on this one and that whole don't freak out thing re-applies as we resolve our little character-twist-vessel-crisis._

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 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 11

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Sam was flagging. Justifiably, in his opinion, though he'd be damned if he was going to let any of it show.

He'd recovered a lot over the last five days. A far cry from the shaking, weak mess who could barely grip, let alone use, a crowbar. But waiting around for an angel in an old, poorly insulted barn had done him no favors (despite the growing summer heat, the May nights were still in the fifties). It was also way later and longer than he'd stayed up for a pathetic number of days now. Despite his recovery, he was still taking cat naps through the day, sleeping hard and heavy for more hours more often than he was happy to admit.

The wait had ended up being humiliatingly exhausting. All he'd wanted to do was lay down, and he knew he was in trouble when the straw-strewn ground started looking good. He'd refused to go lie down in the car like Dean had offered several times once Sam was no longer able to hide the minute trembling in his hands (his brother finally reduced to just muttering it beneath his breath as the hours ticked on). Now, the heat of the flames had him breaking out in a sweat out while his body kept trembling as his internal regulation went haywire. It left him a weak, shaky mess confronting the strongest, certainly the most intimidating, supernatural creature he had ever met.

How Dean just stood in front of the angel, like he couldn't feel the tension in the air, the power radiating off the pissed off being, or that intense blue _glare_ , Sam didn't know. He certainly wasn't feeling as strong as his brother right now. He was barely keeping his gun level, and he knew with that trembling in his hands, however fine it was, he'd be an unreliable shot at best.

The kickback from his handgun would probably land him on his ass right now. Pathetic.

He refused to bow to it, however. He wasn't going to leave or show this weakness, especially not a weakness caused by demon blood. It didn't matter how Dean had tried to reassure him, didn't matter if he knew this wasn't his fault. He would _not_ be the 'boy with the demon blood' this time. He would not be an abomination to the angel standing in front of him. He promised himself that much.

"Sam," Dean called slightly over his shoulder, though he no longer had his back completely to them now that he'd stepped to the side and given himself a little more breathing room. "Put the fire out."

Sam blinked at the request. They'd brought a fire extinguisher with them, though they'd hidden it in the back of the barn so it wouldn't give away the trap. Not that Dean actually thought the Castiel of this time knew what a fire extinguisher was. Or maybe he would know but a trap probably wouldn't occur to him right off the bat. As far as his brother had said, the angel hadn't been too hip to modern stuff, at least not in his first few months on Earth.

However, Dean never actually expanded on his plans for the extinguisher, or the fire itself. Only that they needed to trap the angel so he couldn't run off to Heaven before they'd talked some future sense into him.

Sam may not be an expert, but he had kind of expected (still did, actually) that would take more than a handful of sentences and some manboob fondling. But what did he know? His best friend wasn't an angel of the Lord. At least, not yet.

Bobby balked aloud and unabashedly at the proposal, never losing his grip on the shotgun. He cast a look at Sam that clearly said _'don't you listen to that foolheaded brother of yours, ya idjit. Yer both idjits. That angel's an idjit too.'_ Sam turned back to Dean with conflicting orders and a look that said he was clearly backing Bobby on this one.

"It's okay, he's with us." Although the words were spoken to Sam, they were clearly directed at the angel, even though Dean somehow did so without taking his eyes off of Sammy or his shaking hands. "Right, Cas?"

Castiel tilted his head to the side slightly again, pupils dropping to the hunter's chest for another drawn out moment. When he looked back up, it was with the weirdest mix of perplexed conviction. "I…believe I am."

So, the younger Winchester stumbled his way to the back of the barn to retrieve the extinguisher, although he was still working through his list of reasons why it was a terrible, terrible idea. He tried to hide the fact that he almost tripped on weak legs the best he could. He was pretty sure 'the best he could' wasn't very good at all, considering the looks Dean and, oh crap, Castiel too, were regarding him with once he returned.

He ignored them both, particularly his brother, though the scrutinizing eyes of the angel were perhaps worse in many ways.

 _Abomination._

 _Boy with the demon blood._

 _Addict._

Sam hefted the extinguisher in his arms, pulled the pin, and depressed the trigger. The holy oil doused easily; once a part of the circle was broken the rest seemed to snuff itself out. It allowed Sam to set the hefty metal canister onto the floor a bit sooner, which was good because he was pretty sure he was only a couple minutes away from dropping it.

Damn, he really thought he'd come further than this.

At first, Castiel did not react to the diminished flames or his newly found freedom. Even as Dean backed off a couple steps, breaking past that circle of scorched ground, the angel remained still, staring at the youngest Winchester. Under that piercing gaze, head tilted like a curious bird, and body unmoving in a way that was very _not human_ , Sam felt incredibly self-conscious. Dean looked about to interfere, glancing between the angel and his brother, when Castiel stepped forward with an intense purpose that frankly frightened the young man barely standing on his own two feet.

"Cas, wait-" Dean went to grab the angel's arm but only pinched tan fabric. Bobby stepped right in between the angel and his boys, barrel of his gun pressed straight to Castiel's chest and his own body blocking the way in a suicidal move worthy of the Winchester family. Somehow, despite all that, Sam still found two fingers pressed to his forehead, even as he leaned back at the sudden proximity and unexpected contact.

"Bobby, don't!" was all he heard before something warm and fresh and _healing_ spread through him. He gasped in surprised, the sound drowned out by the blast of a shotgun way too close for comfort. Sam stumbled away from the gunfire instinctually, and blinked in shock as his legs held steady beneath him and his lungs expanded free of the tightness and ache that had been weighing heavy across his chest for days.

"What?" he whispered, barely getting the syllable out, as the reality of what happened refused to register in his bewildered mind. The first thing he could think to do was raise his dominant hand – his shooting hand – and stare at the outstretched limb, fingers splayed at chest level, steady as a rock. No tremble, minute or otherwise.

Sam forgot how to make his lungs work. For the first time in days he had the full lung capacity and muscle strength to do it, and he just couldn't breathe. He hadn't wanted to admit it, even to just himself, but the persistent trembling for days now had started to eat at him like rot. The other symptoms had all lessened while the tremor remained. You couldn't be a hunter with a shaky gun hand. You couldn't kill demons who could disappear in the blink of an eye. You couldn't stop the apocalypse as a handicapped, ex-addict with the shakes.

He patted himself down absently, realizing that the residual pain in his bones and joints and muscles, lingering for days, was completely gone. He felt good. He felt _strong_ , but not like he had on the demon blood. This strength felt like himself and, he realized, blinking away the watery emotion that rebelliously filled his eyes, he felt _clean_.

"Sam?" His older brother was still holding Cas's sleeve, for all the good it did them. Sam stared at the picture the three of them made for a moment: Dean clutching the angel's coat like a child, Bobby's shotgun braced in his shoulder, barrel still smoking, while the old hunter stared in shock at the ease with which the angel had gripped the barrel and forced the gun to the side, harmlessly shooting buckshot and salt into the already crumbling ceiling. Castiel seemed oblivious to both of them and their surprise, standing like an unmovable statue regarding the healed Winchester.

"Dean?" Sam echoed vaguely, still surprised at the healthy feel of life in his bones. He stared down at his hands again, amazed.

"He heal you?" Dean asked kind of cautiously, though it was obvious from the growing smile on his face that he already knew exactly what the angel had done.

"He can do that?" Still dazed, Sam sort of mumbled back, the question rather wasted, since the answer was obvious.

"Partially," Castiel interrupted, hand still on the gun, arm still (sort of) restrained by the older Winchester. He hadn't bothered moving, standing there like some wax sculpture in a sleepy-time tax accountant getup. "I could not cleanse you of the infection entirely; the demonic taint is too rooted in your blood. A small amount remains."

Sam fought off the wince, but was somewhat relieved that the angel's tone remained completely neutral about the infection that rotted beneath his skin and made him not completely human. And, in Sam's opinion, not completely _good_ either. But that was an internal discussion for another night. Dean looked pretty darn pleased with Castiel's neutrality as well, standing there grinning like a kid at his sixth birthday party when all his friends – even the ones who lived _really_ far away – showed up. Not that either of the Winchester boys knew what a birthday party was actually like.

Castiel turned towards the older of the two brothers, releasing the shotgun so Bobby could finally lower it. He immediately looked to Sam, eyes wide and filled with parental concern.

The angel raised his hand, fingers splayed and palm hovering over Dean's chest once more. "May I?"

Dean fumbled with the sudden return to uncomfortable territory, unable to stop himself from glancing at the others. But he couldn't deny the way his chest flipped and _sung_ at just the possibility of that connection again.

God damn chick flick crap.

"It's your grace, dude," he replied with forced nonchalance, eyes darting again to his surrogate father figure, who was giving Sam a quick once-over and hunter-esque run down to make sure Cas hadn't done more than heal him. So far, it looked like the gruff old man might finally _not_ shoot the angel as soon as he got the chance.

Then that hand was pressing against him and his chest was flipping the fuck out, and Dean had to work hard to breathe through the warmth and overwhelming happy. Which was just friggin' ridiculous.

Castiel stood solid for several long, silent minutes as he stared straight past his fingers, through Dean's chest to the grace settled beyond. His expression slowly tightened, eyes narrowing and brow beginning to pinch as that focus deepened.

As the moment dragged on to the point where Dean was thinking an awkward cough or throat clearing was definitely in order – anything to make the angel realize he was standing practically flushed against him, hand on his chest like a friggin' damsel – Castiel pulled his hand back.

Or, at least, he tried to.

The angel's hand drew back, palm and fingers spread wide and straining, and Dean's chest followed without his consent. Though the hand on his chest remained flat against him, the hunter felt the pull as surely as if the angel had fisted his shirt and tugged him closer. He leaned into the weight a few inches before he realized what he was doing and started drawing back.

Cas frowned at his hand, stuck flush to the hunter like he'd glued it there, and tried again. Dean just moved with the limb, no space created between the angel's palm and his chest. He had to take a step forward that time to counteract the sharper tug.

The hunter stared wide-eyed at the physical connection between them, oblivious to the equally panicked eyes of his family beside them. Castiel's face screwed up in concentration and Dean let out a little gasp of surprise as the pull behind his sternum manifested like a bowling ball rolling straight into the wrong side of his body. A warm, wriggling bowling ball that Dean suddenly realized was Castiel's grace.

His friend only frowned and tugged harder.

"C-Cas-" Dean was finding it a little harder to breath at the uncomfortable pressure that continued to build with each of the angel's failed attempts. He wasn't exactly sure how to phrase his concern as anything other than ' _I don't think it wants you doing that, buddy_.'

The angel's eyes sharpened into that dangerous land of righteous _I-Am-An-Angel-Of-The-Lord-And-You-Will-Listen-To-Me,_ and he pulled hard enough to make Dean stagger forward with a weak cry as that heavy mass tried to get from the inside to the outside, _Alien_ style. Sam and Bobby were between them almost immediately, fast enough that if Dean hadn't been dealing with something kind of terrifying and definitely painful at the moment, he would have been impressed and just a touch honored. Sam caught his brother before he could hit the deck and probably give one of his knees a real good tweaking. Bobby bodily shoved Castiel away, staunchly planting himself between the entity and one of his kids once more. He didn't bother training the shotgun on the angel – not enough distance between them to do so and no point anyway, he was realizing – but kept it raised as a warning barrier, even knowing it was nothing but a peashooter to his opponent.

There wasn't a need, it turned out, as Castiel allowed himself to be pushed and stayed there. His expression was just as surprised as the others, eyes blown wide as he stared at the gasping hunter and tried to process what had just occurred. The angel obviously needed a minute himself, shaking off the after effects as he straightened once more.

"I-" he cut himself off, clearly out of sorts still. "My apologies. I sought to alleviate you of my grace."

Dean managed to right himself from his half-bowed position, hand pressed to his sore chest. His heart was beating a mile a minute and he didn't know if that was him or Cas in there ratcheting up his blood pressure. Could have been from fear or the actual physical danger that had left his torso feeling like it had taken a cannonball to the chest, only in reverse. Either way, Dean promptly ignored the way his chest constricted at the very idea of losing the warmth buried happily in there ( _not happily, that's friggin' girly. My chest doesn't do_ _ **girly**_ _. It's just buried in there, damn it._ )

"Yeah," he wheezed out instead, giving a light cough to clear his recovering lungs from their tightness. "I'm guessing Dorothy didn't want to go back to Kansas."

Castiel immediately tilted his head to the side. "I do not understand that reference."

Dean could kiss him, he really could. No, wait, scratch that. Dean could hug him, he really could. Dudes hugged all the time.

"It seems I cannot extract it," Castiel continued, oblivious, but looking bereft at the perceived failure. "Your soul is inexplicably tied to the fragment. It will not release it."

Bobby immediately huffed, still standing as a human barrier and not looking like he would be moving anytime soon. "You telling us Dean's got an angel's soul wrapped around his?"

Dean fought off the flush that tried to heat his cheeks. There was no _wrapping_ involved here, damn it. This wasn't some rom-com snuggle up. Cas was just inside him, alright? No, _shit_ , that's not what he meant. Damn it, he had _not_ just thought that. He'd thought… uh… Cas was just…he was riding around in his chest, alright? _Jesus_.

Castiel turned from staring at Bobby to staring at Dean, confusion and a little concern starting to change that stoic expression spread across his features. It didn't last long (just enough for Dean to start panicking about the angel reading those pesky surface thoughts and oh, yeah, they were going to have to have that talk again) before Cas retrained his intense gaze on the older hunter. "That is a… crude analogy, but not entirely incorrect. Angels do not have souls, nor are we capable of…wrapping around anything. However, our grace is our essence and, as such, could be considered equivalent."

"So…yer essence is all up in Dean's business?"

The older Winchester let out an undignified sound that was in no way a squawk – _no way_ – and followed it up with one hell of a glare in his surrogate father's direction. This night just kept getting better and better, didn't it? Thank God that Castiel, at least, remained oblivious.

"The slice of grace within Dean's soul is very small: an almost unnoticeable sliver, unless you are looking for it. It should not have had the power needed to integrate with a human vessel." The angel frowned, eyes shifting down to the Winchester's chest once more. "Even if it did, Dean's soul should have acted as a barrier. They should have remained separated as the soul rejected the presence of foreign power once its trip through the timestream was complete."

Castiel just stood there frowning at his rib cage and Dean could suddenly empathize with bugs and frogs and whatever else kids pinned down and dissected these days.

"For the grace to resist rejoining mine so strongly, I suspect Dean's soul initiated the integration and is now refusing to let go."

Well that was just _insulting_. He was Dean Friggin' Winchester, damn it. He was not _clingy_.

Bobby snorted something unseemly, which had Dean glaring at him again, but the more distressing reaction was Sam's climbing eyebrows. The kid was clearly starting to catch on to Bobby's amusement. Dean opened his mouth to cut that off right at the head, here and now, damnit, when Castiel looked up at him rather than down at his chest.

"It is most unusual. You would have to be intimately familiar with my grace for such a coupling to occur." Those blue eyes never left his as he moved around Bobby to approach Dean, who didn't try to stop him (and damn it, _now_ the old man was going to side with the angel?!). That was his excuse for why he practically jumped out of his skin when Castiel's hand found its way back to his chest.

What a friggin' site they made, the pair of them. Why was it his feet refused to listen to his screaming head ( _back the fuck up RIGHT. NOW.)_ all because his chest was back to melting into a pile of useless, humiliating goo.

"Have I – the me from your time – put a part of myself inside you before-"

"Okay, you know what-" Dean cut in before Cas could fully finish that flat out ridiculous line of questioning. It was too late, though. Bobby damn near choked on his own saliva, covering it with a coughing fit and gesturing at the dust and straw on the floor as a piss-poor excuse. Castiel turned his head to stare at the ailing hunter in confusion and the beginnings of concern. Sam, meanwhile, was biting his lip trying not to laugh, arms crossed over his chest as he stared expectantly and with no small amount of glee – evil, ugly, smug, son of a bitch, little brother _glee_ – in his eye.

Dean's legs finally got the message from his all-out-screaming brain and the hunter backed the fuck away from his friend, whose hand was still splayed against his chest. Dean shoved the disappointment from the loss of that touch down so hard and so fast, the soles of his feet hurt from it. As well they _fucking should_.

"I didn't realize you were into having angel parts inside you, Dean," Sam offered almost casually. Nonchalantly, even. The _bastard_.

"It would be unhealthy if he was," Castiel interjected, completely serious, because angels didn't fucking _do_ sarcasm. No, scratch that. Almost every angel the Winchesters had ever encountered – would encounter – had no problem with sarcasm. It was just _this_ angel (of course).

Said angel was turning back to him, concern and a little bit of horror bright in his eyes at the implication that Dean was partaking in angel grace like it was mother-friggin' cupcake and he was a fat kid in a candy shop. "I have no idea the consequences of merging grace with a human soul, but I doubt they are good. If the me of your time has been inserting himself into you-"

By that point, Bobby gave up trying to hide that he was flat-out dying, attempting his darnedest to snort and choke his way into an early grave. Worse, Sam was only a few steps shy of joining him, not so inconspicuously wiping at the corner of his eyes as he laughed outright. Ignoring them both, because _fuck_ that, Dean proclaimed, _loudly_ , "You raised me from hell, you stupid son of a bitch!"

Castiel, concerned gaze turned once more to observe what he perceived as two ailing humans having inexplicable trouble breathing, snapped his head back around so fast the motion was nearly a blur. It made Dean choke on whatever words were left on his tongue because, _damn_ , that was not exactly how he'd meant to break that particular sheet of ice.

His brother and Bobby managed to quiet down as well, composing themselves rather quickly given their previous state. Of course, _now_ they were serious. Typical. But Sam hadn't heard the entirety of this tale yet, and Bobby had only gotten the cliff-note version.

Cas was still staring at him, eyes wide, before that blue gaze sank, so damn slowly, to his heart and the eighty-year-old soul hidden beneath.

"Your soul has been in Perdition," he practically whispered, vessel sucking in a breath it didn't need. Castiel didn't know how he had missed it before. Well, yes, he did; he had been justifiably distracted by the presence of angelic grace – his grace – where such a thing should not be.

But now that he was searching for it, Castiel could see the scar as clearly as the rest of the dancing ball of light and life. A dark blemish that ran the length of the otherwise bright and astonishingly _good_ soul. The fragment of grace sat, heavy in the crevice like molded clay, filling the expanse left from years in Hell, burrowing into the edges to seal off the crevice from the rest of the human's soul. Protecting it. Trying to _fix_ it, like such a thing was possible. Castiel was not in a place to evaluate the plausibility of such a decision, made by a version of himself he hardly recognized.

The edges of the mark where the sliver clung to had traces of the same essence, only older: faded and grown into the fabric of the soul as if it had been there at its construction. No, its _re_ -construction. _He_ had remade the bindings of this soul. He had meshed together the broken pieces, irreparably altered and shattered by their time in Hell, and bound the revitalized life to the human flesh that stood before him. Castiel resisted the very un-angelic need to step away from that realization and all that it entailed.

"Sold my soul to save my brother," the man was answering the question Castiel hadn't asked, and the angel used the distracting sound of his voice to draw his attention away from the chaos and panic overtaking his mind.

Dean's answer was rote. Calm. Even. Simple fact. Green eyes darted over to his brother's, meeting the uncertainty, the fear of a terrifying future, and the determination to never see it come to pass, all in one. With a nod to Sammy, Dean turned back to his (hopefully) future friend, who was looking incredibly freaked out.

Well, at least that's how he looked to the only person in the barn able to read him that well.

"Do you know what breaks the First Seal, Cas?"

Castiel found his vessel trying to swallow, unnecessarily, around a large and painful lump in his throat that had not been there seconds ago. In fact, there were many growing causes for alarm happening with his current host. There was a dampness to his palms, the heartbeat was growing erratic, and his stomach felt as though it at a pit as concave as the lump in his throat was convex. He checked James Novak over quickly for the source of the disturbance, but there was nothing ailing him. Nothing to pinpoint the flush of heat or pounding heart. Nothing to further distract from the damning words the Dean Winchester had spoken.

"So it is time," Castiel spoke softly, gaze dropping off to the side. It explained the increased presence of demons on earth, why they had appeared so quickly and in such great numbers when he and Balthazar had touched down. It explained other things too, things he hoped didn't need explanations. "There have been rumors in Heaven. My superiors were investigating the possibility."

"They're in on it." Dean winced at the way Cas's eyes locked on him. The fierce ' _no'_ in that gaze was something he knew he was going to have to break. "I'm sorry. Read my memories, use your mojo on me. It's the truth. I'm the Righteous Man, Cas. In two years I break that seal, and Heaven doesn't lift a finger to stop it."

Castiel realized, as he began to identify the growing pit in the bottom of his borrowed stomach as horror, that he didn't need to read Dean Winchester's mind. He believed him. Which was unsettling in a way he was unsure he had ever before experienced. He knew the man before him wasn't lying. He could sense it, without trying, and more than that, he just knew. It may have been the grace within the man's chest oscillating with his own, or perhaps the influencing fraction he had absorbed when trying to remove it. It could have been that he'd known Zachariah was lying all this time, though he hadn't known quiet what to call it or just how big the lie was.

Still, it should take more. He should need more to be so wholly convinced, to so readily accept this man's horrific words as truth.

A truth that was… enormous. The implications alone were… well, _apocalyptic._ This was something that needed proof, not the whim of a mere feeling. Feelings he shouldn't even possess. Castiel had always been different. Built wrong, he sometimes thought. Angels did not operate on feelings. They investigated. They were precise. They processed and assessed. And then they reported their findings to Heaven, as was their duty. A soldier had no use for _feelings_.

"I believe you," was what he heard himself say instead, voice coming out far rougher than he'd intended and not forming any of the words he had surely been thinking. It was frustrating, the way this body betrayed him when he was certain he had complete control over it.

The angel squared his human shoulders. This was no time for fear or uncertainty; he was a Warrior of God. A little voice in that back of his mind (with an unnecessary British lilt) decided to suggest that this was the perfect opportunity for uncertainty. Very definition of the right time, in fact.

Castiel pushed Balthazar's voice back down. This was not a time for wishful thinking or nostalgic dalliances or for voices of dead brothers to be speaking about in his head. He was a warrior of God, and whether or not he had known it going into the summons, he now had a mission. Castiel could not act until he determined the human's words as truth or fiction. (' _You already know it's the truth, Cassie') ('Stop speaking, Balthazar. You're dead and I've things to do.')_

So, the angel focused on that small wisp of grace he had managed to ease away from the human who had held it so close and refused to release the rest. The drop of power might have been near nothing in comparison to the vast ocean the rest of his grace comprised, but it was, by the very nature of angelic essence, an ocean unto itself. In this case, an ocean with a message in a bottle floating along the top.

"The Darkness?"

Dean straightened at Cas's unexpected rebuttal. The angel had done that thing where he turned inward, gaze not focused on anything and eyes just a little glazed over with _otherness_. That slight, _not human_ thing that all supernatural creatures seemed to possess in one way or another. Dean assumed he was working through the giant-ass bombshell he'd just dropped on the guy. You know, the one that had taken months, a battle-to-the-almost-death-of-his-vessel, bible boot camp, and a painful, final confrontation in a room decked out by friggin' Louie the XIV, before Dean had finally gotten through to Cas last time.

God's sister wasn't exactly what he'd been expecting the angel to come back with.

"You remember?" he asked, trying and failing to quash the hopefulness in his voice. But Castiel was already shaking his head in the negative.

"I was only able to absorb a fraction of the grace left within you. It contained information, not memories," he gave as an answer, eyes still a tad too unfocused to be entirely in the here and now. He seemed to be struggling with the words of a language he spoke fluently but not culturally. "My future self left…a note? Is that an accurate analogy?"

"Yeah, that works." Dean nodded, because it did, near enough. He absentmindedly rubbed at his chest, where the skin was still warm and the grace beneath had finally calmed the fuck down, apparently cluing in to the tone of conversation going on. "So you can't get the rest out, huh?"

He didn't know if he was asking out of disappointment or relief.

Castiel shook his head once more. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Dean's answer came way too readily for that previous emotion to ever be disappointment. He chose to ignore the side-eye his family was giving him and then promptly moved the hell on. "Did the note say anything else?"

Cas straightened in a way that screamed military training, like he'd just been handed his marching orders rather than a chunk of what was essentially his soul carrying a note from the future. "It said to trust you. To assist the Righteous Man and stop the Apocalypse."

Dean couldn't really quantify the relief that flooded him at those words. From the reaction of the rest of his family, the feeling was felt all around. Given that he might have implied anything from death to imprisonment by Heaven as a possible ending to this meeting… well, Dean could hardly blame them for breathing a sigh of pure relief.

Until he noticed that look in Cas's eye. That look he got every time he knew he had to disappoint Dean. This angel probably wasn't very familiar with it yet, but Dean could spot that thing from a mile away, mid battle. It was the look Castiel had given him in Zachariah's holding room when he'd begged the angel to give up everything to save Sam. Not the world. No, Dean knew what he'd been asking and it hadn't been for the sake of the world or for what was _right_ , as much as he swore it at the time. It had been for Sammy, and the look Cas sent his way, the look he was wearing right now, said he knew it.

"You can't, can you?" Dean offered, since Cas looked like he was struggling to say anything at all.

Those blue eyes looked away, down to Dean's chest again. The hunter felt more than saw his brother come up beside him, just over his shoulder. He knew the sasquatch had to be tense, that worried little frown pinching between his eyes. Sam knew the consequences of this particular angel not playing ball, which sounded dangerously like what was about to happen.

"Cas?"

"That is not my name." The angel still wasn't looking at him, and the response was _miserable,_ as if it was the only fight he had left. Dean didn't like being the reason his friend sounded that way. He'd done it an ample number of times in the years he'd known the angel. Certainly long after Cas knew him well enough to know what he was in for each time. It was a new and quite particular variety discouragement to cause that in a Castiel that had known him all of twenty minutes.

So Dean didn't scoff at that fact that _yes it was_ his name, but he didn't correct himself, either.

"I need time," the angel supplied finally, taking a breath he didn't need as he squared his borrowed body and faced the three hunters with as much resolve as an angel in the middle of a crisis of faith could have. "I…I need to process this. It is a lot of information to assimilate. I need…"

"Time to think," Sam supplied helpfully, a far more gracious and understanding expression on his face than his brother's. Sam turned to Dean, that look growing a hell of a lot more expectant, which just wasn't fair in Dean's. "We can understand that."

"Yeah, alright," the man from the future grumbled, trying not to take it personally that Cas wasn't prepared to drop everything he'd ever known, including his home and his family, for some guy he'd just met. Really, Dean could understand all of that. He'd just…hoped. Stupidly. What else was new in this damn timeline he was doomed to repeat. "Take whatever time you need. When, uh, when you've made up your mind, you can meet us at Bobby's."

He rattled off the address, and Castiel nodded solemnly, committing the information to memory immediately. The angel stood there another moment, silence stretching between the three in a way that he understood was incorrect but did not have the wherewithal to identify as awkward. Castiel was just about to leap into the ether, the conversation obviously concluded by the lack of further discussion, when Dean Winchester spoke again.

"Cas, wait."

The tension in his wings, gripped close to his true form but angled in preparation to catch the currents of the ether, dissipated with a single thought. He lifted his head and trained his borrowed eyes on the man he had sent through time, who was staring at him with something very akin to desperation but looked a lot more like anger.

"Yes, Dean?"

Something shook loose in those green pools, and Castiel tilted his head. Humans made such little sense, and he did not understand how something as simple as the hunter's name could so quickly distract him of whatever fears he'd had. The man's surface thoughts were of little help, as Castiel had no idea what a 'catchphrase' was.

"I know you need time," the hunter started speaking, drawing the angel's focus back. He really needed to strengthen control over his wandering thoughts. It was unprincipled and inexcusable. And worryingly akin to the voice of his deceased brother. "Whatever you choose, I get it, alright? But you can't tell Heaven about this."

Blue eyes locked on the human _instantly_ , and whatever focus Castiel had been lacking before was suddenly laser-sharp. Dean winced beneath that gaze, knowing what he was asking but, in true Dean Winchester style, he didn't care. The world was kind of depending on Cas not running off to tell Heaven all about this powwow, and that was all Dean needed to be demanding about it. He opened his mouth to say as much, probably as unhelpfully as possible, so it was a good thing Sam beat him to it.

"Did the note say what's coming?" Sam's words were softer, more understanding, and definitely not what Dean would have blurted out. He sent his kid brother a look that was probably as annoyed as it was thankful. The returning bitchface said Sam got the message (#9: _'You're really bad at this, so shut up and let me do the talking.')_

Castiel's piercing gaze shifted to the younger Winchester, and Dean managed not to wince again, but just barely. Sam handled the sudden, intense scrutiny with grace, though Dean knew the kid well enough to see how nervous he was. Beneath it all, sometimes Sam was still that thirteen year old kid in his freshman year at his fourth high school in as many months, who just wanted people to _like him_.

"Did it say how everything turns out?" Sam clarified, for lack of anything else to do under that harrowing stare. The angel nodded, though he looked particularly wrecked to do so, and Sam couldn't help wondering if it was even possible for a human body to move that solemnly, like living stone, or if it was purely an angelic thing. "Then you know we can stop it. We're going to stop it. But right now, Heaven wants the apocalypse to happen; they'll try and force it. If they find out Dean's from the future, that he knows it's coming and can stop it…"

Sam glanced to his brother. Dean gave him a barely perceptible nod to keep going.

"I know we're asking a lot of you." The younger Winchester turned back to the angel who, though his expression had hardly changed, looked even more wretched with each damning truth Sam was speaking. It was something about his eyes. Sam couldn't explain it, and now he knew why Dean hadn't even tired. "You barely know us-"

"I know enough," Castiel cut him off, rock-gargled voice deep and without hesitation, despite the expression that hardly matched that sureness. In fact, he looked like he hadn't even meant to say it aloud, which was almost comical on the stoic angel. Sam blinked, though, because that sounded like they'd just won him over. At least, maybe on the not-reporting-back-to-Heaven clause, which Sam honestly thought would be the hardest fight.

Distractedly, he wondered what that note could have possibly said to cause the angel to believe them. Whatever it was, it must have been convincing, because Castiel straightened to his full height, which was nothing on the brothers, particularly Sam, of course. Still, he presented like a stone wall and Sam didn't doubt for a second that there was little in this universe that could take the guy down.

"I understand. I will return in an hour with…" Castiel paused, once again at loss for the word he was looking for, only now realizing he was not entirely sure what it was it was he was agreeing to return with. He had just agreed, against every aspect of his training, of his duty, of his own creation and purpose, not to report back to Heaven. Now, though…. These men would expect a resolution, he supposed. A decision as to whether or not he was…what?

 _You're with us. Right, Cas?_

With them. That was the question they were asking.

 _It's okay. He's with us._

Which meant… _not_ with Heaven.

Castiel supposed this was what panic felt like, or as close to it as an angel could come. He shouldn't be feeling anything like this at all, but that only seemed to be worsening the problem. What he needed was time and distance and silence.

Most of all _silence_.

He should seek revelation. Surely God would have something to say on this matter. Guidance, at the very least, though command would be preferable. Of course, none in the Host had heard from their Father in some time, but surely _this_ – the Apocalypse, a flagrant disruption to time-space continuum, the dissolution of a plan He had written to fruition – surely _that_ would be worthy of His attention.

Castiel could not move forward without his Father's consent. He could not disobey the will of Heaven, unless they had truly broken from their Father's hand. Only then could he return with whatever it was the Winchesters were expecting of him.

"I will return with an answer," he finally supplied, though that didn't sound quite right. He was at a loss for what else to say, however, and decided rather than taking the time to further question it, or wait for one of the humans to supply it for him, it would be best to take his leave. Castiel was a second away from launching into flight – he needed that silence and peace _now_ – when distress flared from the grace that wasn't his and wasn't in him. He very nearly stumbled from a completely standstill position and managed not to from sheer will power and a counter flap of his wing.

Castiel looked down at his grounded vessel to find Dean Winchester's hand wrapped around his wrist. The angel stared at the fingers curled atop the tan coat that Jimmy had put on as he left his house, hoping not to wake his wife or child as he spoke with the angel asking him to say yes. How strange the touch felt, now. Castiel had not taken a vessel in a century or more, and angels did not share physical contact in the same way as humans.

 _Focus_ , he (and apparently Balthazar) thought. Castiel raised his eyes back to the hunter.

"Cas." Dean started to speak and then faltered, even as the angel tried to assess what had caused that flare still echoing through both of them. Dean continued to flounder, tongue working but no words coming forth. Castiel's eyes narrowed as he sorted through surface thoughts for the cause of this new, baffling distress keeping him from his silence and revelation.

' _Claire_.'

The name meant nothing to him, but it stirred something deep within his borrowed skin. It took the angel a moment to realize the sensation was Jimmy Novak, waking, and he frowned at the change. He did not like to cause unnecessary strain or stress to those who served as his vessel, and he knew that containing an angel was not an entirely pleasant experience.

He was just about to push the human soul back into peaceful slumber when Dean spoke.

"You can't stay in that vessel."

His teeth ground together in a way Castiel knew, though he was unsure how, meant the man did not like what he was having to confess. His body was rigid and there was a fight in his stance. Were it anyone other, Castiel would be preparing to physically defend himself. In this human, however, he understood it as resolve. Pure stubbornness of the Winchester family line, which Castiel was unlikely to win against. In conclusion, Dean disliked asking what he was asking, but he would not back down from this request. No, that wasn't right. Demand. Dean Winchester did not request things when he was like this.

How Castiel knew any of this was baffling and deeply troubling. He was beginning to think that fragment of grace had more than just information.

"That guy, Jimmy, he's got a family," Dean continued, still through gritted teeth, still clasping Castiel's coat. "A wife and a kid. Damn it, Cas, he's got an _awesome_ kid. And if he doesn't go home to them… it's gonna fuck 'em up. Bad. They don't deserve that; _Claire_ doesn't deserve that."

Castiel stared, surprise flaring within him, at the desperate, pleading, _goodness_ of this human. He could not explain it. He had met many humans throughout his millennia of living, and many of those souls had been good. But Dean Winchester's shone brightest of all his Father's creations he had yet seen. He had grossly overlooked it in that house some time ago, before a Baku had made itself known and demons descended.

Now, though, he was baring witness to what he had missed, because he could feel the ache of Dean's request. It was buried deep in the human's words, and that drop of borrowed grace was translating what he could not decipher for himself. Dean held some unknown attachment to this vessel that Castiel did not understand. It seemed to center around the tan article of clothing he was currently grasped onto, but that made little sense to the angel.

Furthering the grief eddying through his conscience were thoughts a young woman, blonde and fierce and foul-tempered, but Dean's emotions towards those memories were fond and proud. This was clearly Claire, aged to the time that Dean had been sent back from, and he obviously held some parental love for this child. That relationship would not exist if James Novak were returned to his family. Still, Dean asked (no, _demanded_ ) not for himself, but for her sake.

"You gotta find someone else, man. Someone without a family to leave behind or a life to fuck up."

Dean's tone was adamant. Castiel understood his request. For deep within his borrowed body, Jimmy's soul rejoiced at his beautiful daughter grown up, and yet simultaneously wailed in terrible grief, seeing and hearing all that Castiel did. The angel was humbled by the human's love and pain, as he was humbled by the honorable soul his Father had chosen to bare the weight of being the Righteous Man.

However, Castiel did not believe Dean understood what it was he was asking. The difficulty of such a task – the improbability of success – outweighed the sentiment and honor behind it a dozen times over. The angel tried to say as much. "What you're asking is difficult."

"I don't care," Dean cut in sharply, causing the angel to stare. "Get it done, Cas. You can't stay in Jimmy; Claire deserves a father."

Behind him, Bobby cleared his throat and Sam made an aborted nudge at his back. Dean caught both, but he didn't care. This was non-negotiable. Claire Novak wasn't going to end up losing her father and her mother twice. Castiel could go find some old geezer on the edge of death with no family to abandon or be hunted down by demons should shit go south (which it always, _always_ did).

"Ask him," he said instead, no less fiercely, as he nodded at Castiel. "Ask Jimmy. Claire's an amazing kid, and she's going to grow into a kickass woman, but she deserves a life with her parents. She deserves a _childhood_. Don't take that away from her twice, Cas."

Castiel hardly needed to converse with the soul he guarded to know his answer, but he did so anyway. James was his charge, and as such, his health and well being were Castiel's responsibility. Jimmy was an honorable man; the angel knew he would not renege on their agreement to serve as his vessel, but Castiel could also tell he wanted to. The sheer panic flaring through the soul in painful bursts was enough for the angel to understand how desperately James Novak wished to return to his family, despite his noble desires to serve God and Heaven. Castiel was quickly becoming certain that nothing else would calm the agitated soul, and this current state of alarm was hardly healthy. As his charge, Castiel had no other discourse but to return him to his family to ensure his well being.

' _You keep telling yourself it's for that soul in your chest.'_ That British voice was back. ' _And not to see those pretty green eyes go all mushy again.'_

"I understand," Castiel announced, firmly ignoring his dead brother's voice in his head, half of whose words he didn't understand anyway. How a voice in his head could say things he himself did not know the meaning of was beyond him. He may have promised not to report these proceedings to Heaven, but he was very seriously considering reporting Balthazar's voice, if only to be free of it. "Your request is neither easy nor pertinent, but I will do what I can to fulfill it."

Then he was gone.

-o-o-o-

Sam was the first to break the silence that settled in the sudden absence of the angel. ( _And thanks for the warning on that one, Dean. 'Angels can teleport,' that's all you had to say. Jerk.)_ He skewered Dean with a look that was one part little brother, two part bitchface (mostly #5: _'Did you really just say that?'_ with a hint of #7: _'Really, Dean. Really?'_ )

"What?" the older of the two rebuked defensively, rolling his shoulders as he tried to release some of the built up tension he hadn't even realized he was carrying throughout that encounter. It could have gone a lot worse, he supposed. Could have gone better, too.

"You don't think that was a little…"

" _What_?"

Sam rolled his eyes, annoyed, and shrugged defensively, "I don't know, _harsh_?"

Dean scoffed, looking at Bobby, but the older hunter wasn't exactly rearing to back him up. He gave an apologetic one-shouldered shrug that pretty much said, ' _yer brother's got a point, kid.'_ Dean looked back at Sam, annoyed that he was more annoyed than he should be. "Seriously? The guy's an _angel_. He can take it."

"Maybe your Cas could," Sam answered, shaking his head, "but that Castiel doesn't know us yet, Dean. You pretty much demanded he go find another vessel, something you told me aren't just hanging out on every street corner."

"He can't stay in Jimmy," he argued immediately, again more defensive that he knew he had a right to be and unsure why he was so damn frustrated by Sammy calling him out on this and Bobby backing him up. "You don't know Claire, but she doesn't deserve this life, Sammy. She's gonna grow up _normal_ this time. Don't you get that?"

"No, I get it, Dean. I do." Sam sighed, some of his bitchface slipping at how damn desperate his brother was looking under all that hotheadedness. Dean had always had a soft spot for kids, even if he tried to play it off like he couldn't stand them. It only got worse with kids caught up in the wake of the supernatural, like he had been. "I'm just saying, we're asking the guy to turn his back on his home, his family, without much more than our word that he should. You could at least be _nice_ about it."

Dean was halfway to telling them they didn't have time to coddle the guy, words already formed and flowing from his mouth, when he realized that wasn't true. For once in their lives, they _weren't_ on a ticking time bomb of a deadline to the next end of the world as they knew it. They had the time to do this right, and Dean just hadn't wanted to… what? Patiently wait for his friend to come around?

He'd never been great at that, though. Even he knew that when it came to Cas, he wasn't the most patient or understanding guy. He'd seen firsthand how maybe not-well Cas handled expectations he couldn't possibly live up to.

Dean sometimes forgot that his friend was so much more than just an angel. Sometimes he got lost in how powerful Cas was, how seemingly untouchable and, yeah, a handy guy to have in your corner. But he also remembered plenty well – well enough to wish he didn't – the times when Cas hadn't been that angel. When he had been hurting, down for the count or struggling with things no angel was ever meant to deal with, like PTSD or Falling or becoming the new Lucifer in the eyes of his entire family. Things he had walked right into for the sake of saving the world. No, that wasn't right and Dean knew it. It wasn't the world Cas cared so much about, it was the Winchesters. Always had been.

Maybe seeing that all-powerful, entitled dick from seven years ago, the one who wasn't ready to lay down on the wire for him and his brother yet, had kick-started those old fallbacks.

' _I needed to be useful_.'

Dean swallowed down the reactionary noise at that memory, of a dead angel standing on a dock in his head with that miserable look on his face, claiming he'd unleashed Lucifer on the world, let the damn Devil possess his body, so he could still be something to the Winchesters.

Instead of doing what he really wanted to do (which was swear like a sailor and maybe break a few things with his fists until his chest felt better), Dean let out a frustrated, garbled noise and ran a hand through his hair. Alright, so Sammy had a point. Maybe demanding shit of the angel they'd only just met wasn't the coolest move.

He'd apologize to Cas when he came back in whatever grandpa skin he found.

Of course, all of that went right out the window when Castiel flapped into existence in Bobby Singer's living room exactly fifty nine minutes later, wearing nothing but a hospital gown and possibly the most gorgeous woman Dean had ever laid eyes on.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/Ns:** Before anyone goes freaking out, lemme esplain! (For those of you not freaking out, feel free to skip the novel-length author's notes and review instead ;)_

 _ **-No Jimmy?** Not yet, I'm afraid. First things first: this **isn't permanent**. We *will* be seeing Jimmy Novak (as Cas) again. In the meantime, why did I do this? Well, when I started the story, I made a commitment to stay true to the characters. I take great pride in writing them believably, but it comes with consequences. One day I was thinking up how Claire was going to end up in the story, and it was like I hit a brick wall of 'oh shit.' Once Dean thought about Claire and what losing her dad did to her, he would never let Castiel stay in Jimmy._

 _Well, crap._

 _So that was that. I realized I had a problem on my hands. I could get rid of it the easy way: have Cas refuse or find some reason why he couldn't leave Jimmy. But if there is one thing I've learned in storytelling, it's that limitations breed creativity. If you throw away an idea or use a shortcut because it's convenient, your writing will suffer. So here we are! Castiel needs a new vessel._

 _…..Great, so now what?_

 _ **-Why A Female Cas?** I decided pretty quickly that if *I* couldn't have Misha!Cas, I was gonna screw over Dean so hard his boner- I mean bones would hurt. Because I'm a dirty rotten author and he's a stubborn douchebag for making me lose out on Misha. So I'm gonna put that best friend of his that he has questionable emotions about right in front of him in a body he can't ignore (and let's be honest, if Chuck ships it, he'd totally pull this dick move too). Which leads my next point, actually._

 _ **-But…but…where's my Destiel?!** This story is still ultimately Destiel (and despite what you read above, it's still gonna be the slowest burn on the planet) and it will be M/M by the end. However, here's the second half of my reasoning for this choice: from everything I've seen in the show and the character analysis I've done on Dean, he's not actually gay(Non shippers sticking with this story for the content not the romance, rejoice! ;P)_

 _But *GASP* you said this was Destiel! You said you_ liked _Destiel! Lolz, don't freak out: it is and I do._

 _Here's my thinking (and I've done a lot of it). Dean has never shown physical attraction to a guy on the show. He's certainly not homophobic (he's been fairly open about man crushes, his siren was a male, there was that gay hunting couple he had no problem with, and he's generally very sex-positive). At best, he could be bi, but I think that physical attraction is still missing. Like I said, when I decide to stick to a character, I do it thoroughly. So, how does someone like me think Destiel is a thing? Well, I believe Dean is emotionally in love with that angel, or, at the least, all those emotions are there but they may not have taken the shape of love yet. Because a relationship usually requires a physical side (and Dean's a physical guy) something has to change for that love to develop or be realized. There needs to be either a physical push or a mental one. It's why, personally, I feel a lot of Destiel stories are OOC for Dean, because they don't explain or take into account the gap in his character from 'not physically into men' to suddenly 'very physically into one man'. And that gap is totally fillable, you just need a push. Which is what we're doing here._

 _ **-Welcome to my Push:** So far, Dean's been able to utterly ignore any emotion towards Cas that might border on the 'more than friends' bit, because he's written it off as close (very close) friendship due to a lack of physical attraction. But put Castiel in a body he can't deny being attracted to, and he's going to start rethinking some of those pesky emotions he's got. I assure you, his panic will be downright adorable, as many of you are probably hoping for. And right around the point where he finally gives up and accepts that he wants Castiel, I'm gonna throw our favorite angel back in a male body and maniacally laugh as Dean has a mid-life, mid-apocalypse, straight up identity crisis. (You know Chuck would do it to, don't deny it.)_

 _In other words, Dean was asking for it; it's his fault we lost Misha!Cas to begin with!_

 _Plus, I've got more than one scene of Castiel going to Sam because he does not understand why Dean's avoiding him *again*. And Sam gets to explain sexual repression and emotional constipation to a genderless angel XD_

 _ **-Character Study** : The third and final reason I decided to do this is that, as an author, this is an awesome challenge. Angels have no gender, which means that there should be absolutely *no* difference between Cas and Fem!Cas. You shouldn't even notice if I do it well, and that is going to be a hell of a thing to get right. See, some of you may have guessed this already, but I'm, well, human. Yup, I said it, now you all know. And as many of you may also know, humans have two genders, which means I have a gender bias by default, whether I like it or not. We use different descriptors for men and women; women speak, move, and act differently. So I've got to somehow drop *all* of that, twenty plus years of societal training, and write a genderless character. I'm excited, guys. And you all better keep me on my toes about how I'm doing, because I won't always get it right._

 _(case in point, be prepared for me to mess up a lot in the beginning and still refer to Cas as 'he'. It's ingrained in me. This is gonna be tough.)_

 _ **-You Done Blabbing Yet, Woman?** Almost. In conclusion, what I'm hoping is that, this far into this little beast of ours, I have:_

 _1\. Hooked you all well and good by now and you'll just have to stick it out because you gotta know how this time-screwy story is going to end (and oh, the places we'll go first!)_

 _2\. Proven that I have the writing chops to maybe, just maybe, pull this off. (That's a real maybe guys, not sarcasm. Like I said, I'm nervous about this, too!)_

 _(Side note: this doesn't even cover #3: You're totally fine with/actually excited about this twist and you only read the author's notes because you like it when I babble.)_

 _Anyhoo, I get this may not be what some of you signed up for. After consulting several other writers and friends in an absolute panic over this decision (certain I was going to piss off readers and have people mad at me for not putting this sort of stuff in warnings at the start of the story), the overall response I got was write the story **you** want to write._

 _So that's what I'm gonna do. And that story comes with these kinds of twists. I'm excited for it, and I hope you all join me for that ride. Also, Congrats on getting through the two whole pages of Author's Notes. Have I mentioned I'm verbose?_

 _ **-Reviews:** I would love love love to hear your thoughts on this, so send them my way! And if you are upset about this choice, or disagree with it or anything I've said, please remain civil in your comments. I would still like to hear them._

 _ **-Up Next** :We get things from Castiel's point of view as he goes through the realization that he already has an answer, he just has to get over how badly it's freaking him out. To be fair, it's freaking Dean out just as much, too._

 _ **-Heads up** : no post this Sunday as I'm still only a couple chapters ahead of this one and putting up two chapters in one week is the opposite of helping that situation XD_


	45. Season 2: Chapter 12

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns:**_ _Okay, phew, okay okay. So we had about what I was expecting (hoping for, really) in reviews! Other than a crap ton more of them, that is. You guys really blew it out of the park! We seemed to have about 75% excited, and those that aren't are of the *grumble, grumble, you make excellent points, but I don't_ like it _* variety. Which I can work with ;)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings**_ _: We back track a minute and a half because we've got some freaking out to do, humans and angels alike. Meanwhile, Bobby's having a drink because_ house guests _, and Sam's back to having visions. So, party all around, really._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 12

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean made it all of about six and a half seconds from Bobby's front door to the den before he lost every inch of that cool, calm, collected hunter he'd portrayed in the barn for the last hour while the rest of his family did their best not to wet their pants, or worse.

"What did we just do?" Dean paced Bobby's living room hard enough to leave track marks in the rug. The owner of the old house was just watching him from his desk chair, hat tossed on the cluttered surface and eyebrow raised disparagingly. "We just let the only chance we have against the Apocalypse _fly away_ to have a friggin' panic attack!"

Dean kept moving, back and forth and back and forth, and Sam couldn't help but mutter under his breath about who was having the panic attack. Dean shot his brother a nasty glare (and gee wasn't it _nice_ to see that with his health restored, _Sassy Samantha_ was right back in the driver's seat) but otherwise didn't slow down for a second.

"We shoulda made him stay." The man from the future paused long enough to run his hands through his short hair, tugging at the poor strands with uncontained frustration. _Worry_ , Sam identified, correctly. "No reason he couldn't think it through right here, damnit!"

Where they could keep an eye – and maybe a ring of holy oil – on him.

"He said he'd come back, Dean," Sam offered, trying for consolation but not fully getting away from annoyed younger brother. When Dean got like this there wasn't much anyone could do to talk him down from it. He needed action, and waiting around for their one shot against the end of the world to show back up with a yes or no wasn't really doing it for him.

"No, man, didn't you see him?" Dean shook his head. "He was freaking out."

Sam exchanged a helpless look with Bobby, who just shrugged. But with another, more pointed look from the youngest Winchester, the hunter cleared his throat. "His expression didn't really change. At all."

He deliberately ignored the look Sam sent his way that said _'Thanks. How incredibly helpful of you, Bobby.'_

"Trust me; he was freaking out," Dean answered, looking like all he wanted to do was start pacing again but one look from the old hunter had him staying rooted in place. "He's gonna report it to heaven. That's it. We're all screwed."

"Dude," Sam cut him off before his brother could really get going. When green eyes turned on him for interrupting his building tirade, Sam just gave a little shrug of his shoulders as if to say _'nothing we can do about it now'_ and then followed the look up with the words, "There's nothing we can do about it now."

Dean narrowed his eyes at him.

"We just have to wait," Sam continued, oblivious to his brother as Dean added a newly minted bitchface to his mental counter (a special subset he entitled 'bitchshrugs'). "He said he'd come back, and I thought you said he's not much of a liar."

That managed to pull Dean out of wherever his head was (the location varied depending on whether you were asking Bobby or Sam), and he let his shoulders drop, some of the defensive tension easing out of his posture. "No, he's not."

"But is he gonna bring half of Heaven back with him when he comes?" Bobby asked. Dean tensed again and Sam shot him a glare, to which he just shrugged in a _'bite me, we oughta be prepared'_ way. "Wouldn't be a lie."

Dean went back to grumbling about being so screwed.

"So…. What? We're just going to sit here and freak out for the next-" Sam made a show of checking his watch. Three could play the drama game- "thirty nine minutes?"

His brother made a grumpy noise at that and headed for Bobby's liquor cabinet. "I need a drink."

When his sidelong and, admittedly, judgmental look went unnoticed by both men – Bobby barking at the boy to fetch a second glass – Sam just sighed and told Dean he might as well make it three.

-o-o-o-

Castiel intended to seek a location that embodied the solace and silence he so desperately needed, perhaps a secluded forest lake or the top of a mountain. Nepal was truly one of his father's many masterpieces, and Everest its crowning glory. It would be a worthy spot to commune with the Almighty and seek His guidance. But Castiel never made it. A single powerful flap of his wings sent him soaring above Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a flash of bright colors against dark greens brought him straight back to the ground. He was barely conscious of the change in course, finding himself standing quiet suddenly in a front of an empty playground, silent and peaceful beneath the bright moon.

After a moment of contemplation, listening to the echoes of children at play, four legged animals in the fields and trees, parents talking – all the life that this park had seen for many years – the angel sat down on a bench and stared at the vacant, colorful structures. There was a reason Castiel's favorite memory of Arthur Staten's heaven was the park near his childhood home. This was not the same park, and even if it was there would be many years difference, but it carried with it the same beauty and life that Castiel had found so calming when he' first stumbled upon the autistic man's personal paradise.

Castiel closed his eyes and listened for the bright, happy souls that had touched this place. He let them calm the chaos just barely at bay beneath his borrowed skin. As their light soothed his thoughts in tandem with his grace, and he turned his focus inward to contemplate Dean Winchester's words.

God would have an answer for this. It was too big, too much, for Him not to have a say, to not have been the orchestrator of it all. If Heaven was acting against His will, then surely God would do something. If _this_ was His chosen path – pitting two humans against the Apocalypse raised, in part, by his own children, with Castiel as their only support – well, as insane and desperate and improbable as such a plan would be, Castiel would oblige. _Had_ to oblige.

But how was he to know if Heaven was acting against His will without God's guidance? Had the End not been written in stone, by His hand, millennia ago? He had only the word of a human whose opinion of God left very much to be desired, and a future version of himself he barely recognized. Less than barely. _Could not_ recognize.

"Oh, that's a load of horse shit and you know it."

Castiel closed his eyes and resisted the very human urge to groan. When he opened them again, his brother was still standing in front of him, despite the fact that he was most certainly not, because he was _dead_.

"Go away, Balthazar. You're not real."

"Real to you," came the biting, English lilt, followed by a shrug as though the angel had no cares in the world. Which he didn't, because he no longer walked it. "Come on, you were just wishing I was alive so you could talk this thing through. And here I am!"

Castiel ignored the flourish in his brother's gesturing. He hesitated, reluctant to take up the offer to console in a hallucination of his own making. It sounded like a terrible idea. An insane notion. But he'd only be talking to himself, right?

"What would you do?" he asked before he could stop himself, and Balthazar's eyebrows went up.

"If I was in your shoes? Run the hell away." The angel threw his thumb over his shoulder for emphasis, despite Castiel's eyes narrowing on him. "I'd skedaddle right out of that mess while I still could. Front row seats to the apocalypse, and with a couple of hairless apes for sidekicks? Yeah, think I'd pass."

This time, Castiel did not bother to hide the groan, though he wasn't quite sure he'd done it right. It was a weird noise, rumbling through his larynx, but the release of it felt good, so he supposed that was why humans did it.

"You are not helping," he groused at his brother, resting his head in his hands, elbows propped up on his spread knees.

"You don't need my help, Cassie." Balthazar shrugged one shouldered, leaning his hip against the back of the bench and crossing his arms lazily. "Because I'm not you."

Castiel sighed and picked his head up to stare pleadingly at his brother. He knew where Balthazar was leading him, and it was someplace he did not want to go. Because his brother was right. He already knew the answer to this question. "What would I do?"

Balthazar snorted softly, pinning Castiel with a look. "Be a complete, noble idiot, like you always are. You'd rush head first into this, because it's the ' _right thing to do._ ' Or, you know, something along those ridiculous lines."

"How do I know it's right?" the angel whispered, staring down at his hands, perched atop his legs. The thought of Heaven turning its back on the world, _trying_ to end millions of lives, hurt deeply, down where his heart would lie were he human. "How can it possibly be right?"

"Because Heaven's been wrong for a long time, brother." Balthazar wasn't looking at him, eyes off in the distance, past the empty playground. Castiel raised his gaze to watch his imagined brother, and the sadness in his face matched Castiel's own. The angel did not know if that, too, was his mind projecting his own sorrow, or an accurate memory of his brother. "We just didn't want to admit it."

Castiel stared at his brother, dawning horror stretching across Jimmy Novak's human features in ways that angelic faces never did. Were never supposed to. He whispered, the astonishment lost in the soft noise, "That's why you knew how to leave."

The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't are ask it. Didn't want to ask it.

 _Would you have?_

The look on Balthasar's face was answer enough, as though he knew well the question Castiel refused to ask. Maybe he did, because he was only in his head, so he knew it all. Worse, that meant it was Castiel himself putting that guilty, regretful, but not sorry look on his brother's face. Castiel had known all along, he just hadn't been willing to see it. He'd chosen ignorance and ran away as surely as his brother had been planning to.

He closed his eyes and could not decide which was more painful: the betrayal of one of his closest kin or his own blindness.

"Go away, Balthazar." When Castiel finally looked up again, the imaginary angel was gone. He honestly did not know if it made him feel better or worse.

What else had he turned a blind eye to?

 _'Father?_ ' Castiel shut his eyes and sought revelation, but not from Heaven. He desperately pushed aside the sinking feeling in his grace – a feeling entirely new to him – that he would not get an answer. The certainty in that dread frightened him more than anything else had this day, and it was turning out to be a very long day.

 _'Father, please, I need your guidance.'_

Castiel sent prayer after prayer, seeking direction. Was this God's plan for him? To assist in the derailment of the Apocalypse? Or was he being led astray by the humans and his own doubt. He was not without that, sinful as he was to admit it. But it had no place in his life, in a soldier's life, in the life of a Warrior of God, and to embrace it would be to disobey.

The angel waited for an answer, any answer. He waited. And waited.

 _"Castiel?"_ The voice that answered back was soft, hesitant, internal, and far too familiar to be the voice of God. Castiel turned inward, to the soul of his vessel tucked safely in a corner of his mind's body, now very much awake and aware. The angel did not respond, but he let the human know he was listening. " _If you need someone to talk to-"_

Jimmy faltered, and made a noise Castiel recognized as self-deprecating. _"I know I must seem small compared to all this – what could one human possibly offer an angel in advice – but… if you need someone to talk to, I'm here. I'll- I'll listen."_

The offer was flawed, tentative, and Castiel could sense Jimmy's regret in offering almost instantly. Not out of insincerity, however, but self-flagellation. James Novak was a good man; all he wanted to do was help others, to be of service, to God, to the world, to his family, and Castiel found deep honor in the man's soul, no doubt what had led him to say 'yes' in the first place.

"I will return you to your family as soon as I am able," Castiel promised instead, unsure of where the solemn vow had come from, but not bothering to deny it. What would be the point? He intended to keep that promise, despite how difficult finding another vessel would be.

If he even intended to stay on Earth, that was.

" _Thank you_ ," Jimmy breathed out in a relieved rush. " _I miss them. I always felt my life was missing a bigger purpose, but I- this- seeing Claire all grown up and h-hearing what she'll go through without me-"_ Jimmy was struggling to finish his thoughts, cutting himself off abruptly one sentence after the next. Castiel understood the feeling. The human took a deep breath, trying to calm the edge of hysteria that had crept into his voice. Castiel understood that too. " _They are my purpose. They were all along, and I need- I… I would like to go home to them."_

Jimmy silenced himself once more, easily worked back up to an emotional state that wasn't going to benefit the angel he was currently playing host (and apparently counselor) to. This wasn't the time for hysteria, nor did he want Castiel to think so little of him. " _But that's not why I offered."_

Castiel was silent a moment as well, marveling at the strength and kindness of this human, and in no way thinking the little of him he feared. "I don't know what to do."

He didn't even know what Dean Winchester was asking of him.

" _It sounded like they were asking you to be on their side_ ," Jimmy answered the fear Castiel had not voiced aloud, though he supposed he didn't need to, not when sharing this body. Perhaps he ought to tighten his control over his thoughts and emotions, though he didn't see how that would help this conversation. After, however.

"Their side against who?" The angel replied back as miserable as the human had ever heard him. "Heaven? How can I possibly choose a human I barely know over my own brothers? My home. My Father."

" _Well,_ " Jimmy tried to sound reasonable, tried to forget that it was an incredibly powerful and ancient celestial being he was talking through a problem, and instead thought of it like any other conversation he'd held with his young, confused daughter as she continued learning about the world. _"Do you think Dean's telling the truth?"_

He knew he was. He just didn't understand how he knew, and that scared him.

" _What would you do if it is the truth?"_ Jimmy asked, feeling Castiel's surety more than hearing any response.

"Stop Heaven." The answer came immediately, and Castiel closed his eyes against the truth of it. He was learning much about himself that he had chosen to ignore for so long. There was no point going back now. "If they are acting on their own, in the name of God but against His will, then they must be stopped. Thousands of innocents will die."

It was the least satisfactory answer he had ever come to. Castiel felt no closer to resolution or action than he had before he'd been asked it. Before he'd answered the summons. Before he and Balthazar had left Heaven. Before everything had changed.

 _"Castiel, can I ask you a question?"_ Jimmy's voice was back to being hesitant, and the angel suddenly dreaded whatever his inquiry was. _"You…You may not like answering it."_

Regardless, he inclined his head in the affirmative, though Jimmy could not see it, but he didn't need to.

 _"What if… If this_ _ **is**_ _God's plan, and Heaven is following it…"_ The human faltered, and Castiel had the oddest urge to lick his lips and rub his hands together. _"Thousands of people are still going to die. Would you do nothing then? If- if it was part of the Plan?"_

Ice flooded Castiel from head to foot, straight through his grace like a lance, up into his wings like freezing lightning. He couldn't breathe.

 _No_ , he thinks. _It can't be. No._

Because the answer to Jimmy's question came readily. Easily. Everything leading up to this point, to that question, was nothing compared to the horror filling his borrowed bones, icing over his body until he could feel nothing but the cold. For the first time in his life, Castiel knew true fear, and he hadn't had to leave the park bench to feel it.

 _'Love them. Love them as I love them,'_ God had commanded, voice rich with pride as he surveyed the heavenly host and, beyond, his newest creations. ' _Guide them as their Shepherds, for they are now your Flock.'_

Castiel had obeyed his beloved Father's orders, and he had done so sincerely. He saw the beauty and wonder in all his Father's creations, and had been earnest in his watch over them. He had loved humanity, and the birds in all their colors, and the four legged beasts of the plains and the jungles and the mountains. He loved the plants and the trees, the flowers pollenated by bee and butterfly. He loved it all.

If God commanded the Apocalypse now, what was Castiel to obey? He could not do both. He could not love and destroy. One command or the other, he would disobey.

He couldn't breathe. He was drowning in the ice.

Was this a test? If so, what was the correct answer? Was he to be the good soldier? Or a good son.

He couldn't _breathe_.

" _Have you ever heard 'the Charge of the Light Brigade'?"_ The question broke through his panic, if only because he had to think so hard to parse it. It was a non-sequitur, irrelevant, and Castiel was busy experiencing his first panic attack.

" _It's a poem,_ " Jimmy continued without a response from the angel, " _about six hundred soldiers who charged into a battle they knew they couldn't win_."

Castiel still couldn't breathe.

 _"Their leader messed up. There was a miscommunication, and I think some of them had to know it, but they went anyways."_ Jimmy had first read that poem years and years ago in high school. An impassioned catholic school teacher had drilled a message of courage and honor and tragedy into her students that year. It was one of those offhand things Jimmy never really forgot, perhaps because it had so clearly aligned with his own faith and his own doubts. _"The poem talks about honoring those soldiers, for charging on even when they knew following that command would get them killed."_

Castiel could not yet see the human's point. Did he not have two conflicting commands? He could not love humanity and be the one to open the doors to its destruction in the same breath. He _couldn't_.

 _"It wasn't about orders, or blind faith. It was about honor. Dying for a cause worth fighting for, I suppose._ " Jimmy almost laughed at how unfair it was for him to say that. He was going home; Castiel was not. " _Faith is a choice; I've learned that much. That's why blind faith and following orders without question, just because they're orders and you're a soldier, can be so dangerous. You open yourself up to corruption."_

The angel had two choices in front of him, and the decision had to be his and his alone. God wasn't testing him, of that Jimmy was certain. He was only waiting for His son to make up his mind.

 _"Pick the cause worth dying for, Castiel, and you won't have made the wrong choice."_

Castiel opened his eyes and had his answer.

-o-o-o-

"We gonna talk about you having a chunk o' angel in yer chest?" Bobby was well into that glass of whiskey, and had waited for Dean to match him finger for finger before bringing it up. The kid flushed a little (and Bobby couldn't help but think ' _nailed it'_ ) and finished half of what was left in the glass with one gulp.

"What's there to talk about?" Dean asked, voice agitated and body language purely on the defensive. "It's fine, Bobby."

"Having some supernatural thing's _soul_ in you ain't exactly what I'd call _fine_ , boy," Bobby chided back, watching the kid wince and wondering if it was the disapproval or the fact he'd called the angel a thing. Or maybe it was how much like John Winchester he knew he sounded. He wasn't taking it back, though. Dean might be fine with this, and hell, he could even be right about it (though Bobby had his doubts), but he wasn't getting away with it until he explained why exactly they shouldn't be freaking out.

"I trust him, alright?" Dean sent a glare Bobby's way, daring him to argue with that. "It's Cas, and I trust him, so it's fine."

Bobby didn't bother saying just how not-Dean it was for him to be trusting something so blatantly inhuman. He knew that a lot changed between now and when his boy was from; a lot more grey had started showing up in a world that was usually black and white. Still, seemed kind of stupid to him to go carrying around an angel battery in yer chest without at least putting up a fight about it. Or getting more information on the darn thing. Like were there gonna be consequences to that chunk of power riding shotgun in a human soul? Cuz it sure sounded like the kind of thing that would have _consequences_.

"Besides," Dean grumbled into his glass as Bobby sent a look Sam's way that his younger brother returned in full, "the grace hasn't done anything to hurt me in the last six months. Why start now?"

In fact, he was pretty sure Cas had saved him a couple of times, or at least acted as an early warning system. He hadn't realized it, but now that he knew something was up with his chest, it was pretty obvious that it ached anytime they were near demons, for starters. And Cas had pulled him out of the Baku's dream in time to save Bobby when Meg showed early.

So, yeah, it could stay right where it was, thank you very much.

"Except to detonate a bomb that almost killed you," Sam countered a little acidly, pulling Dean back to the present conversation.

"Please," he rebuffed, downing a hefty gulp of his whiskey, "that was a defense against a demon soul-searching me. It's not like that's a common thing."

"Unless they're trying to blow you up," Bobby added, most unhelpfully. Dean glared at him.

"And kill themselves in the process? This thing almost took Azazel out." He patted his chest, pretty proud of Castiel's little temper tantrum. Served that yellow-eyed bastard right.

"And you with it," Sammy muttered, eyes dark as he remembered begging his brother to just breath.

Dean continuing talking like he hadn't heard him. "No demon's going to go after a bomb at ground zero and blow themselves to kingdom come."

"You've obviously never heard of a kamikaze attack," his genius brother snarked, shaking his head from his seat on the old couch, whiskey relatively untouched, though he took a pretty healthy sip from it now. Bobby huffed something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh _and_ agreement. Which was just doubly insulting.

"Okay, _look_ ," Dean interrupted the both of them before they could get started any further. "Low-level demons are almost always about saving their own skin. And you don't use a general in a kamikaze attack. I do _read_ , you know."

"You watch World War II movies," Sam bit back, though he didn't argue the rest of Dean's point.

"Same thing. Aren't they all based on books anyway?" He fetched the bottle of whiskey off Bobby's desk, pouring himself another finger despite having not finished what was in there already. "My point is, it's _fine_."

Whether Sam stopped arguing because he knew a lost cause when he saw one or he was hoping to keep his brother at least somewhat sober for when Castiel returned, the discussion concerning the grace sitting pretty in Dean's chest ended there.

-o-o-o-

The search for another vessel would not be easy. Jimmy's soul had called the loudest as soon as Castiel had reached out for one, and the vessel's particular bloodline seemed a good match to the angel's grace.

Several of Adam and Eve's decedents had been chosen by God to be blessed by angels, to cleanse them of their parent's sin after Cain committed the first murder and it became apparent that something had to be done. It was not a purifying ritual, although each of the angels sent from Heaven were more than capable of doing so. God had not sought to rid humanity of the consequences of their ancestor's choices, but there was a balance to be maintained, he'd said. Or something like it, since the words had come through the Gardner and the Scribe, rather than God himself.

From there, those children, bearing traces of angelic grace in their purified veins, gave birth to the bloodlines able to host a heavenly body. Each of those descendants reacted differently to an angel's grace. Some bloodlines were more attuned to particular celestial wavelengths and the different Spheres of Power than others. James Novak's heritage – that of the son, Ishmael – was clearly such a line for Castiel.

That was as good a place to start as any. At least it was a place, Castiel figured. He would seek out Jimmy's blood relatives and hope that one of them, by the work of a miracle, would fit Dean's strict criteria. Castiel was painfully aware how unlikely that was, and certainly not within the hour deadline he had inadvertently set for himself before learning Dean's final request. He would likely have to return to the Winchesters in his current vessel and complete his search after he delivered his answer.

It was with some surprise, then, that the first blood tie Castiel was able to locate was not only capable of hosting an angel, but was also braindead in a hospital in Waimea: the result of a drunken driving incident that had killed both her parents and her fiancé less than a month ago. Her remaining kin, a great aunt and three distant cousins, had flown to the island to sort the aftermath of the tragedy. They were no longer able to cover the cost of care or continue the extended period away from their jobs and families, and were now discussing terminating life support with the attending physician.

Castiel could hardly believe it.

Jimmy had no surviving parents, nor grandparents; his mother and father had passed while he was in his adolescent years, and he was an only child. So Castiel had had to start further back. The bloodlines were as seared into his mind as the names of the prophets or the history of Man, and so he knew that Ishmael's blood has passed to Jimmy through his father, Gregory Novak, who had no full-blooded siblings, only a half sister who did not carry the line. Jimmy's grandmother, Anabelle, had eight siblings for Castiel to track down. The first, Jimmy's deceased great aunt, had three daughters, all with children and grandchildren of their own now. The angel proceeded with the oldest, which took him to the island of Kauai, where Melanie Novak had gone to school, met and married an island native, and started a family there. The couple had two children, a son who passed at a young age from a childhood disease, and a daughter, whose hospital room Castiel currently stood in.

Angela Anne Garrett was Jimmy Novak's second cousin. Despite the diluted blood between them, the familial resemblance was still present, at least to the angel's trained eye. He could see it in their bone structure and in their blood. Jimmy's great grandmother must have had very persistent genes.

Castiel hesitated as he reached out to the small, withering soul within the dying body. This woman met each of Dean's demands, an impossible improbability that could be none other than his Father's hand at play. This was the path he was supposed to be on. It must be.

As long as Angela Garret said yes.

-o-o-o-

Sam had just finished his glass (not nearly enough to get him buzzed, but seeing as both Bobby and Dean were well into their second helpings and _someone_ had to be in their fully right and cognizant mind when Cas came back…), setting it down on the floor beside the couch, when the headache hit. It started as a dull ache, building pressure behind his zygomatic arch and spreading behind his eye and up to his brow. It was like a sinus headache, the kind that builds up over time until your head felt like a giant balloon, or that throbbing pressure that sometimes came with large weather changes. Only, unlike those, which were drawn out, this thing moved quickly.

One second Sam was rubbing at his cheek and brow to try and relieve that mounting ache, the next he was doubled over on the sofa, slipping onto the floor, grabbing at his head as it exploded in pain, like someone had driven a spike straight through his skull. He heard his brother and Bobby both shout for him, felt their hands on his shoulders and the hardwood floor beneath his knees. Then he wasn't in the house anymore.

It was dark, and it hurt, and despite the lack of any real source of light or definition, everything still came in blurry flashes that Sam struggled to discern. He was in a cave, of some sort, though the walls around him swam and settled and flickered in a nauseating pattern.

The more he strained to see, the more he tried to discern, the worse his vision – and the pain - became. Sam ground his teeth through the agony and forced himself to relax into it. To let that last speck of demon blood rule his veins. Everything still blurred at the edges and his solidity within the dreamscape kept flickering in and out, but the room did clear enough for him to focus.

It wasn't a cave, but some sort of dark, cavernous structure. Huge stone pillars supported the ceiling, and the walls were made of blocks of reddish brown stone. The light was incredibly dim, and Sam couldn't actually identify a source, but he could make out the shapes of great stone sarcophagus lining the walls of the large, open room and a circular staircase of the same brick that descended both up and down, disappearing into the darkness.

"Isn't it beautiful?"

Sam spun at the voice, the familiar, ugly sound that sent a shiver traveling down his spine to pool as dread and fear deep in his gut. Azazel was standing only a few feet away, eyes shining yellow in the darkness. He wasn't looking at Sam, though.

There was another person in the tomb, standing in front of a large, square entryway with huge metal hinges hanging empty and useless, bolted into the walls. The wooden doors they once clung to were long since lost to time, the last bits of which scattered the threshold, petrified from years in the undisturbed dark. Sam couldn't see much beyond the large entrance, but what he could see was both incredible and terrible. An impressive ramp gave way to a city below, in an expansive darkness that held no stars in the sky and could only be some great cavern far underground. Half standing walls were all that was left of the buildings, half covered in waves of sand that had built up over what could only be centuries of dust and settlement. The city was in ruins, and Sam had the great and awful feeling that it wasn't just time that had caused such destruction and decay.

"Not all in the city deserved this fate."

Sam's attention was brought away from the dreadful and yet incredible sight to the person standing in the doorway. It was a woman, her short stature, long dark hair, and curvy figure giving that away just as surely as her voice. Sam chanced a glance back to Azazel, who was grinning at the unknown woman. The hunter took a moment, hesitating only a little at the adrenaline and healthy dose of fear, to wave his arm in front of the yellow eyed demon. Azazel didn't so much as shift his gaze.

Full vision then, Sam thought, and he was just walking through it. That was good. He really, really didn't want to be this close to the demon now, or ever again.

"Exceptions should have been made," the mystery woman was speaking again, tone full of spite and bitterness. Behind her, behind them both, Azazel snorted.

"Exceptions were made."

"More than a man and his family!" the woman snapped, and Sam could practically feel the anger radiating off of her in waves, despite not really being there. Curious now, despite the thrum of fear racing through his body and urging caution, the hunter tried to move around her while still keeping his distance. However, no matter how he tried to round her body or creep into the large doorway, he never could see her face. It was as though she turned with him, even as her bare feet never moved on the stone, and he didn't get more than the same view of the back of her head.

Sam glanced back at Azazel, then her. He must be seeing this through the demon's eyes, despite his very three dimensional presence in the room with them. Azazel could not see her face, and so Sam could not see her face. Or, so he guessed; he wasn't exactly an expert at vision walking. It would explain the weird, dulled lighting without a source. Demons probably had night vision.

"Don't take it out on me, little lady," the demon replied with utter indifference, shrugging his borrowed shoulders. "I didn't do the deed."

The way her head jerked to the side suggested she was seething, biting back whatever fierce retort was on her tongue as she refused to so much as look at him. Sam couldn't help but glance between the two of them again. What was this?

They continued their disparaging conversation, mostly exchanging useless shots at one another that Sam wasn't really paying attention to. Instead, he tried to take in as much of the building he was in as possible, and the city outside. Anything to clue him into where he was and what Azazel could possibly be doing here, but there just wasn't much to go on. Some of the tombs were inscribed with a language Sam didn't recognize, but he did his best to commit it to memory. The city beyond the doors, what he could see of it from the raised position of the structure they were currently in, was old. Really old. The buildings that were still standing looked mud-built, but they were so far deteriorated that Sam wasn't even sure. The ruins disappeared in rolling hills of sand and dirt, quickly disappearing into the darkness of the secluded world this place existed in.

"-and this Sam Winchester, he is important?"

Sam's head snapped around at the sound of his name coming from the woman. She still had her back to him and Azazel, hands crossed over her chest, staring out into the ruined city.

"You could say that." Behind him, the demon smirked. "We have a very special task for him. If he survives long enough to fulfil it."

"This is why you came for me?"

There was something stiff about her words. Both of their words, actually, and Sam realized quite suddenly that they weren't speaking English. He didn't know what they were speaking, but Azazel's lips didn't match the understanding Sam had, and he realized that as surely as he was staring at this woman through the demon's eyes, he was hearing the conversation through him as well.

"I hear guiding lost kids is sort of your thing."

Sam immediately filed that away, glancing back at the mystery guest as he tried to reason who – or what – she could be. She clearly wasn't human. Although she looked the part in a pair of skinny jeans and a black tank top – that still had the tag on it, Sam realized after a moment, staring at the little white slip of cardstock peeking out of shirt's arm-line – her bare feet and unearthly presence suggested otherwise. Plus, he was pretty sure there hadn't been anything human in this place in a long, long time. At least, nothing living.

Whatever she was, she gave an indignant snort at the demon's words, tossing long, badly tangled locks over her shoulder with a shrug. "Where is it you hear these things?"

It definitely wasn't English, whatever they were speaking. Sam tried to place the verb and noun placement, the lack of descriptors, but it wasn't enough to go on. And every time he tried to focus his head pulsed like it might explode on him if he didn't _stop._ Besides, he didn't know how much was true translation and how much was Azazel's interpretation of the language.

But if he could figure out what they were speaking and the writing on the sarcophagi, perhaps he could identify at least the country this city used to belong to. Along with its deities and monsters.

"We are not alone."

The hunter snapped to attention as the conversation abruptly shifted. Fear flooded his system with adrenaline and a fight of flight reflex as the woman's head jerked to the side and he got the first impression of a cheek and a blazing green eye, locked sidelong right on him.

"Someone is watching us."

Sam sat up in Bobby Singer's living room with a huge gasp, clutching at his pounding skull and eyes that he would gladly claw out of his head if it would end the stabbing pain behind them. His brother was on him immediately, surrogate father at his side with a glass of water, but Sam couldn't get those glowing eyes out of his head.

He'd seen them before, only he had thought it was a withdrawal-fueled hallucination.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/Ns:**_ _Sorry to cut if off there, folks. Like the last one, this chapter grew well into the twenties in page count and I had to split it up again. I gotta stop writing such long chapters if I'm ever gonna get ahead of the posting curve, aaaah!_

 ** _-Up Next:_** _Cas meets Angela Anne Garrett and tries to talk her out of being his vessel, for reasons neither he, nor the voice of Balthazar in his head, entirely get. Guilt is a weird thing. They're working on it, though. Jimmy offers another helping hand, and Dean gets his first taste of how screwed he really is._


	46. Season 2: Chapter 13

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns:** You all beautiful readers get this chapter a day early! In part because I'm off on a hike but mostly because I had a good two weeks where I got four chapters out. That deserves a little celebratory posting, I think :)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** We meet Angela Anne Garrett, who's surprisingly chill about an angel all up in her head (then again, she'd take just about anyone showing up in her head at this point), Sam's talking green eyes and Bobby's getting out the books, while Dean's about to find out just how screwed he is._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 13

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam's hands were shaking again. His head was killing him from where he sat, almost doubled over on the couch between his mother-henning brother and a worried Bobby. He was never touching demon blood again, but he couldn't deny how much easier those visions had been when he was on it. Couldn't help but miss that unforeseen benefit, even as he hated himself for it. Honestly, though, Sam had forgotten how much his head _hurt_ after a sober vision, at least before Azazel had blackmailed him with Layla Rourke's life all those months ago.

His hands were shaking again.

Sam took a deep breath, held it, and fisted his hands slowly in his lap. When they opened again, air flowing out of his lungs in a slow release, his fingers were far steadier and Sam chose not to think about how damn relieved he was.

"I'm alright," he finally muttered, having spent the last several minutes in a tense, jittery silence between the three of them. As far as his brother and Bobby knew, he'd been fine one minute, and keeled over having nothing short of a seizure on the floor. They'd both seen him having a vision at least once, so they'd both correctly guessed what was happening. To Sam's relief, they'd waited to hound him with questions until he could see straight again.

"What'd you see, Sammy?" Dean asked, trying and mostly failing to keep his voice even. The tension and terseness that was so _Dean_ couldn't be contained, though. Neither could that strict, worried expression on his face.

"Seemed like a bad one," Bobby offered, nailing the parental, worried-but-casual tone a hell of a lot better than Dean.

So Sam told them. It hadn't been a bad one, at least not content wise. No one had died a horrible, bloody death that he was forced to bear witness too. There wasn't a desperate, ticking time bomb the brothers had to rush against in order to save some innocent's life. Still, his head rung like the worst of them, and he had a weird pit in the bottom of his stomach that told him whatever Azazel had been doing in that place, whoever that woman was, it wasn't good.

It was somehow worse that it had been his second vision of her. He remembered that place, the cavernous darkness and tombs. Remembered being in the bottom of a stone grave, Azazel reaching down to him. He remembered those angry green eyes amid pain and fever and confusion. Sam had had a vision in the middle of his withdrawal, lost in the other hallucinations and symptoms.

Dean's tightly pinched brow, low over his eyes in that sort of confusion that bordered on angry (standard Dean reaction to news he didn't understand and liked even less), was not doing Sam any favors in the comfort department, either. Nor was the way it deepened as Sam connected the dots between his two visions out loud.

"Do you think it was Ruby?" the younger Winchester asked, a little weakly. He cleared his throat and accepted the glass of water Bobby offered. "Or, um… Lilith?"

Dean shook his head, shoulders lifting and falling in anger at his own lack of knowledge. He crossed his arms over his chest only to pull them away to fall back at his sides again. His gaze roamed across Bobby's den, but he what he was seeing was a long string of apocalyptic memories. "I don't know. Ruby was Lilith's lackey. Doesn't make sense that Azazel was down in some ancient, wrecked city digging her up."

That place certainly didn't sound like the Hell he'd seen firsthand. But the pit was endless, with many different layers, or so he'd heard rumors of during his time down there (and what he'd read here and there suggested it was true). He supposed each of them could look different, though he'd only witnessed the one where they took new souls to break, and he doubted any corner of Hell was actually quiet like the place his brother had described. Sam said the city in his vision had been dead – literally.

"And Lilith?" Bobby asked, eyebrows up because Lucifer's First Born and Princess of Hell was the last thing they needed to be worrying about right now.

Again, the man from the future shrugged in frustration. It didn't sound right, but he honestly didn't know that much about Hell's bitch queen. Only that she'd been one hell of a big-bad, had wanted Sam's head on a spike as a red herring for what they really needed his brother for, and liked to dress up in little kids. "You said this chick had green eyes?"

"They were glowing," Sam confirmed with a nod, wincing at the pain spiking through his temples. He couldn't get that single eye out of his head. Fierce, bitter, so _angry_ , suffused with an unnatural green light. And all of that had been aimed straight at him through a curtain of black tangles.

"Lilith and Ruby are demons. They're true forms ain't pretty, and they possess different people when they're topside. They could look like anyone," Dean reasoned with a small shake of his head. "But Lilith's eyes are white. Ruby's black."

"So," Sam reasoned slowly, drawing the word out with a breathlessness that encompassed how they were all feeling. "She's something new."

Dean didn't have a clue, but she wasn't ringing any bells. And given how Time seemed to hate him, that was probably a bad sign.

Bobby started pulling out books on ancient languages and civilizations that had been sacked, Sam grabbing several for himself as the old hunter handed them over. Dean sighed, cast his half drank glass of whiskey a wistful look, and resigned himself to sobering up for research and the return of a tide-turning angel.

-o-o-o

Angela Garrett's mind, upon realizing it was in severe trauma and very near death, took the shape of her childhood swimming pool. It was a community pool just off a private beach, outdoors with palm trees and large-leaved bushes and, her favorite, Naupaka plants blossoming in the sand along the beach side.

She'd grown up with the legend behind the little white flowers with their weird, semi-circular blossoms that made them all look like they were missing half their bloom. Her mom always loved legends, especially creation stories, and those surrounding the Hawaiian Islands were no exception. She'd loved telling her children those old tales. Angela just loved falling asleep to her mother's voice, something even adulthood hadn't driven from her.

The legend of the Naupaka was about a Hawaiin princess of that name, who fell in love with a commoner she was forbidden to marry. When a temple priest in the mountains confirmed there was nothing he could do to change their fate, she pulled the white flower from her hair and ripped it in two, giving half of it to her lover.

 _'Go back to the beach,'_ she said, heartbroken, ' _and I will stay here, in the mountains._ '

That was why the flowers only bloomed in halves, and why the Naupaka that grew on the beach looked different then the same plant that bloomed in the mountains. Angela had always loved that story, both for the whimsical explanation of a biological quirk and for the tragic beauty of its star-crossed lovers. She'd always had a thing for those.

"They are quite beautiful."

Angela spun at the voice, surprise coating her features. The pool and community center had been empty all this time, nothing but the lapping of chlorinated water and the distant crashing of waves. Nothing like her actual memories, full of screaming and laughing children, vendors shouting food orders out the concession window, seagulls crying in the sky, traffic on the main street beyond the bushes and parking lot. That's how she knew this was all in her mind, a dream of some sort, where she was stuck and couldn't leave. Because it had been this way for _days_. Well, Angela could only guess that it had been days. Nothing changed here. The sun didn't set, didn't even move, so it wasn't like she had a way of tracking time. Really, it felt like weeks, but she doubted that was anything more than her boredom turning her dramatic.

"Who are you?" she asked of the stranger now standing a dozen feet away from her, staring at the Naupaka plants with intense concentration. He was dressed ridiculously for a summer day at the pool. Striped, cotton pajama bottoms and a t-shirt under a tan overcoat of all things. He was a laughable hallucination after all this time of loneliness and waves.

"My name is Castiel," he said, voice deep and raspy, eyes wide and blue as he turned to face her, though he didn't come any closer. "I am an Angel of the Lord."

She didn't bother calling bull, in part because at the same moment he said it, she could almost _feel_ it was the truth. It wasn't something she saw, or at least, she didn't think it was, but suddenly there was an impression of wings, of swirling colors and bright, beautiful light, and she knew that sure, yeah, this was an angel dressed in fuzzy slippers and a beige coat.

"Are you here to take me to heaven?" Angela had never been particularly religious, but she was a believer. Faith more than the Church had taught her there was an afterlife, and if there was an angel visiting her right now, she guessed it had been right.

The angel shook his head. "It is a reaper's duty to ferry the souls of the deceased."

"Oh." Angela tried very hard not to let _that_ little tidbit freak her out as much as it did, picturing a creepy figure wrapped in black and death, coming to collect her with a terrifying scythe. The angel titled his head to the side, looking remarkably like a bird observing something it didn't understand. She ignored the immediate _'cute_ ' that came to mind. It probably wasn't okay to think of an angel as cute. "Then… why are you here?"

"I have….work to do on Earth," Castiel answered, his struggle with word choice suggesting he wasn't confident that was the right one. "I am unable to appear before most humans in my true form, including those that I must work alongside."

"Oh," she said again, and mentally kicked herself for sounding like a numb idiot. She was usually more loquacious than this, really. God, Mark would be making fun of her so much right now. He'd double down when he realized that she was fighting back the urge to ask whether the slippers were part of that true form or not.

"How…uh, how can I help? I mean, what does that have to do with me?" And now she was being rude. Angela kicked herself again, and the angel redid that little head tilt. It occurred to her, rather suddenly, that if he was in her head, he could probably _hear_ her when she did that.

"I need a vessel," Castiel continued, not mentioning it if he could, indeed, hear her thoughts, for which she wasn't sure if she was thankful or just paranoid. "A human form so that I can operate on Earth."

Angela stopped paying attention to that head tilt or telepathy contemplation and instead blinked, mind adding two plus two and getting _what the heck_. "Me?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

Darn it. ( _Full sentences, girl!_ ) Angela took a deep breath, commanding her brain to start thinking in more than single syllables. "Um, how does that…uh, work, exactly?"

"You would need to grant me permission to enter your body, where I would assume control of your actions until my work is complete." The angel said it so matter-of-factly, like they were talking about putting together an IKEA bookshelf (not that those were ever actually matter-of-fact either). Angela kind of couldn't decide if it was the blandness of having been _here_ for weeks or the angel's tone that had her feeling just as calm about it, too. "After that, your body will be returned to its current state."

"Will I be awake?" she asked before Castiel had quite finished his previous sentence. She spared another half a second to chastise herself again for being rude, though the angel didn't seem to take notice or care, which was good, because she wasn't quite sure she cared either. Truth was, she didn't plan to ask whether or not he could heal her. Give back her life. She may believe in God and Heaven, but she didn't believe in random miracles. Besides, she got the sense that if Castiel was here to do that, he would have done it already. But if he was here to get her out, one way or another, that was something she had plenty of questions about.

"It is the practice of most of my kind to put the soul we are sharing a vessel with into a slumber, so we do not disturb-"

"Could you not?" At Castiel's surprised look, Angela cleared her throat awkwardly. Darn, she really was being rude. She gestured around her, to what so many would see as a paradise, until they were trapped in it for days. "I've been praying to die forweeks now. I gave up praying to wake up, honestly. At this point, I just want to be _not here_. Not alone, in this place that never changes!"

She took another deep breath, trying to reign in the anger and futile frustration that had been building for days.

"If you're going to use my body, I get to see the world again, right? I can live a vicariously through you. At least a little longer." Angela smiled as she said it, trying to take some of the bitter sting out of the words. She really wasn't trying to chase off the angel asking to borrow her body, which she apparently wasn't even using right now. "That's what's happening, isn't it? I'm dying?"

"Yes," Castiel confirmed, though he was slow to do so, almost hesitant, she thought. He seemed to think for another moment, not so much to give her time to process what she already knew (though it was still a whammy to hear it) but because he was thinking over her request. "I believe it can be arranged to leave you awake. It may not be entirely pleasant, however."

"Anything would be better than this," she replied, this time unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

There was another moment of hesitation before Castiel opened his mouth and all but blurted out, kind of ungraciously for a supposed angel, "Your kin is in the hospital."

She blinked at that, hope suddenly flaring in her chest so strongly that she swore the world around them got brighter. "My parents? Mark?"

It was immediately clear on his face, by the way those ocean blue eyes widened and the swirling colors she'd gotten an impression of darkened, that he'd made a drastic mistake. The hope sank like the Titanic, taking that brightness, and the lives of her family, with it. Like clouds passing in front of the sun, the world grew a bit colder and got a lot greyer.

"No," Castiel answered roughly, an apology clear in his rather expressionless face, which seemed to be a thing for the angel of the Lord. "Your immediate family and fiancé were killed in the car crash that put you here."

Despite the fact that she'd thought of nothing else for days on end – been certain for days on end – her eyes still watered and stung. Her heart hurt so much, she clutched at her chest even as she nodded, because she'd _known_. She didn't know how she knew, but she had. She's spent days sitting on the edge of the pool, feet in the sun-soaked water, listening to the waves crash, waiting for death so she could see them again.

Everything came in impressions here, wherever here was. Impressions of light and swirling colors and wings. Impressions of people and laughter and happier times. Impressions of speed and pain andmetal on metal. Impressions of being truly alone.

Castiel tilted his head again, this time with a slight chin turn that made it look like he was listening to something. And then he was in front of her, one arm reaching out to rest awkwardly on her shoulder in some parody of comfort that he clearly didn't understand. She almost laughed at that terrified look on his face, but it came out as a sob and Angela leaned into the first physical contact she'd had in so long that it hurt. She buried her face in that stupid, out-of-place trench coat and cried.

A second arm joined the first in the most awkward hug possibly in the history of humanity, but Angela didn't care. Awkward or not, it was comfort and she needed it, even if she wished she didn't. It was the hesitant, slightly-too-hard pat on the back that finally had her pulling away, choking on a small laugh, heavy with phlegm and emotion.

"Thanks," she whispered, wiping at her eyes. The angel nodded, those blues eyes still wide, causing her to laugh a little again, even if it was a sad, pathetic little sound. "I figured they were… I figured."

She looked around helplessly at the pool she couldn't leave, that she'd spent so much of her childhood at, with her parents teaching her to swim, or lying in the sun, or playing in the pool. Her dad had taught her to do front flips off that diving board on days when the pool was less busy and the life guards less likely to yell at them. Her mom had caved to her and her brother's whining and bought ice cream from the concession stand almost every trip.

"You'll see them again," the angel spoke, his voice no less gravely nor firm, but somehow still soft. Comforting, as that hug had intended to be. "They are in heaven, at rest now."

"They're happy?" She didn't know why she needed to hear him say it, but she did.

He nodded, blue eyes intense and almost glowing in the grey light. "In my Father's halls, each soul resides in a paradise of their fondest memories. Your loved ones are happy. They are with you, and you are with them."

The angel looked troubled saying it, though Angela couldn't fathom why. She gave up on the mess that was her tear-streaked face and folded her hands across her stomach loosely in a loose self-hug. "So, what 'kin' is here, then? I don't have anyone else."

"I believe they are…distant." There was that head tilt again, lesser this time, and Angela wondered if Castiel did that every time he fumbled with words, or possibly emotions, or if it was just because he was clearly uncomfortable now that he'd brought up her loss. "The only relatives the hospital were able to contact were your great aunt and several removed cousins."

There was another awkward pause as that troubled look worsened. When he spoke, he looked reluctant to do so, though his words reflected none of his obvious indecision. "They are discussing terminating your life support."

Angela blinked, surprise coloring the world around her once again. "What, right _now_?"

Castiel started to nod, stopping halfway through the gesture to tilt his head, listening to something she couldn't hear. She looked around the empty pool and grey, clouded skies above, but there was nothing. The angel resumed his nod. "Yes. I believe they will make a decision shortly."

She couldn't help but suck in a breath, which rattled out of her in a nervous little laugh. Ridiculous. She had prayed for weeks for the isolation, the nothingness, to end. Whatever way that had to happen, she promised herself (and the God she'd been praying to) that she'd be fine with. Anything to get out of this limbo.

Now, it seemed those prayers were going to be answered, and she was _terrified_.

So, Angela did what she'd always done when she was afraid. She thought about something else, and she did it in a big hurry. Her brain latched on to the first thing waving a big yellow 'distraction' flag.

"Why would you tell me that?" Her brow pinched together in confusion, the words out of her mouth before she'd really thought about them. But yeah, no, this was a great distraction. Because Castiel needed her help to operate on earth, and she was getting the feeling it wouldn't work out so well for him if they pulled the plug before that happened.

She kind of got the feeling that was what that troubled look was all about.

"You deserve the choice," Castiel confirmed, a look flittering across his face, colors running just underneath his skin in a way she could never look straight at but could sort of see if she only looked at him sideways. Angela would have sworn those colors were shades of regret. Though, of what, she didn't know. "If you agree to be my vessel, it may be some time before you join your family in Heaven. If you wish the wait to be over now, I will not interfere, and you will be taken to my Father's Kingdom once your body passes."

"But…" Angela was still working double time to ignore that whole death thing looming just underneath this conversation. Heaven sounded nice, of course, but it was still _death_. "You need a, what did you call it? A vessel."

"I will find another." That look was back, stronger, and Angela almost called bull aloud before she realized that was probably blasphemy or something in front of an angel.

"What work is it you have to do on Earth?" At this point, it was a heads or tails toss up whether she was just putting off the inevitable and distracting herself from having to make a choice that was robbing her of breath, or if she was curious about what would bring an angel to Earth. Given the stiff way this one talked, that wasn't a super common occurrence.

Castiel hesitated again, and Angela suddenly realized she shouldn't have asked. He didn't want to tell her, which was a weird thing to see after he all but gave her a way out of this.

"I have to avert the Apocalypse."

Could you choke on air when you weren't even awake? Angela did a darn good job of trying to answer that question. "The- the apocal- you're joking right? Oh my god, you're not joking. Holy…"

She cut herself off, taking several deep breaths through the hand she slapped over her running mouth. Nothing in those intense blue eyes suggested he was joking and she wondered what she'd done in a past life to get herself stuck in these kinds of situations.

"So, you're literally asking me to help you save the world?"

"I…suppose I am." He was back to that regretful look. "Failure is a very real possibility. In the case of your body perishing in my service, your soul will be guided to Heaven."

"Wow." It was all she could say. Maybe not a huge step up from 'oh,' but she didn't have anything else in her to say. This was… just _wow_. So, rock, meet hard place, and both ended in death. Well, honestly, that made her decision so much easier. "Okay, so what do you need from me?"

The angel just stared, and she realized he hadn't been expecting that answer.

"Would you rather not be united with your family?"

It was almost cute to see how baffled he was, and the way he clearly wanted to kick himself for asking. That troubled look was making so much sense now that Angela almost laughed. It was tempting to remark on why he kept giving her outs in the first place if he didn't think she'd say yes, but she held back. It would be cruel, she figured, and he seemed off balance enough already.

"Honestly?" Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she chewed on the soft tissue as some of her humor died, replaced with the somber reality around her. She glanced at the pool, at the community center and the palm trees, at the Naupaka flowers delicately moving in the breeze. Angela tried to focus on the good times that happened here, the echoes of laughter and happy screams. But all of that was tainted now by how long she'd been stuck here: miserable, alone, afraid, and angry. She didn't want to stay anymore, but she wasn't ready for what came next, either. Even if she'd thought she was.

"I'm scared." She let out a little laugh, despising how weak and nervous it sounded, but this was _death_ they were talking about. The great unknown, even if she was standing in front of a man who had all the answers. Uncertainty was healthy, she told herself. It was human.

"Death is nothing to fear."

Angela smiled up at him, but shook her head. "That's good, cuz it sounds like it's coming either way. At least this way I get to see a little more of the world first, right? And help you save it, I guess."

That got a more real laugh out of her. God, she was going to save the world. What a story she'd have for Mark when she saw him again.

"Are you sure?"

Having enough with the angel apparently trying to talk her out of a decision he clearly didn't want to talk her out of (and yeah, she'd picked up on _that_ ), she leveled him with a look. "I can't believe I'm about to use a line this cheesy, but Heaven can wait. It doesn't sound like you can."

Castiel's shoulders sagged minutely, just a centimeter of tension gone from his solid, brick wall of a stance, and Angela knew she'd made the right choice.

"So how do we get this show on the road?"

"You say yes."

She quirked an eyebrow at him. That sounded ridiculously easy. Probably a good thing it was an angel asking her to do this and not something more deceitful, because if a single word was all it took to steal someone's body away from them, that seemed way too easy to misuse.

"Then, yes."

-o-o-o-

Castiel sat upright, pulling wires and tubes tight with the movement. High pitch noises began screaming from the machines lining the wall around the bed, and the angel waved them into silence with a hint of annoyance. The new location in the hospital room was disorienting, as was the weakness of this new vessel, being kept alive by grace alone.

Jimmy stumbling into the mattress, bracing himself on locked elbows as he gasped and struggled to right himself, was far more grounding. The human was justifiably unbalanced at the sudden return of control, and Castiel touched two fingers to the man's temple to insure no residual damage remained from the brief angelic occupancy.

Jimmy jerked away instinctually, then leveled apologetic blue eyes at the angel, who had taken no offense to the reaction.

"Castiel?" His tone was hesitant, as though he wasn't sure just who he was talking to.

"Jimmy," she returned with a slight nod, doing a quick assessment of her new vessel, as grace filled out every limb and organ, repairing what it could and restoring life to the rest. Castiel pulled the hospital sheets off her new form and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. They were stiff from disuse, but the angel knew that would lessen with time and her grace. She stood, ignoring the arm Jimmy offered her, as she did not require assistance.

"Stay here," Castiel ordered and, with a short flap of her wings, was gone from the room.

Jimmy barely had time to take a deep breath and revel in controlling his own lungs again when she returned. He jumped, staggering away from Castiel out of sheer primal reaction of something not being there and then suddenly _being there_. He clutched at his chest and the tried to calm the pounding of his heart. Boy, he hadn't missed feeling that sensation.

"What did you-"

"I altered the memories of the doctor and Angela's kin. They will think they successfully disconnected her from life support and passed her body on to the appropriate recipients." Her voice was deep, with a raspy quality that Jimmy was starting to think was entirely Castiel. He'd heard his own voice in his ears while the angel possessed him, and he'd known it had been much deeper than what came naturally to him. Jimmy knew the normal cadence of Angela's voice wasn't so deep either, having heard it for himself while inside her head (and thank goodness the angel had brought him in, since he'd – was it she, now? – certainly needed some guidance on offering the grieving woman comfort and reassurance).

In fact, overall it was very odd to see the angel that had visited him just hours ago, who had worn his body, and was now standing, somehow still intimidating, as someone completely different and yet entirely the same. Angela was several inches shorter than Jimmy, with atrophied muscles and dark circles under her eyes that, even now, were clearing up. They shimmered with a barely visible light just beneath her skin that Jimmy knew must be grace. She wore nothing but a hospital gown, and still the human felt cowed by the commanding presence that was entirely Castiel.

Jimmy opened his mouth to suggest finding her some new clothes, because intimidating or not, Jimmy had spent enough time in a hospital after his appendectomy to know that her rear end was very much not covered right now. But the angel leaned into his personal space, cutting him off before he even got started.

"I will return you to your family now."

Before Jimmy could manage a step back, two fingertips were pressed to his forehead and they were suddenly back in his home in Pontiac, Illinois. The house was quiet and the darkness of the first level suggested his family was still asleep. Amelia hadn't noticed his absence from their bed yet, and he was so overwhelmingly grateful that his knees grew weak.

Castiel gave a single nod, waves of thick, brown hair shifting in juxtaposition to the solemn movement, and Jimmy found himself moving before he could think better of it. He wrapped his hand around that slim, malnourished wrist before Castiel could take flight. He could almost feel the phantom wings spreading wide, that ghostly flicker of tightness in his back that was no longer there. Jimmy tightened his grip without meaning to.

Fiercely blue eyes – so close to the ones he saw in the mirror every morning – were now locked on his from a completely foreign face, and Jimmy swallowed heavily in the weight of that gaze. Even know, he knew why he had said yes to this incredible, beautiful, powerful thing that had asked for his help. He understood why Angela said yes, too.

"Thank you." He hoped his gratitude, his honest-to-God sincerity, came through. He really could not mean it more. "I know finding someone else… it wasn't easy."

Actually, it had been shockingly easy, Castiel thought, which was why she was now entirely certain God had a hand in it. A sign of His approval, His support to continue on this path, no matter the obstacles. The improbability of their recent success suggested no other solution. However, it was not relevant to the current conversation, or to Jimmy's point.

"You are welcome," she said instead, dipping her head in acknowledgement of his gratitude. He was a good man, and she was glad to be able to give him this. "Live a good life, James Novak."

Then she was gone, and Jimmy sank to the floor in the middle of his foyer and broke down, sobbing into his hands. He stayed there on his knees, uncertain his legs would support him or his lungs would withstand anything more than breathing through the relief and terror and joy. He thanked God for His endless mercy and grace, and prayed He would watch over the angel who now charged into a war that Jimmy, thankfully, had no more part in.

Claire's worried voice broke through his fervent, tearful prayers, and Jimmy's head shot up to find his beautiful baby girl at the top of the stairs. He smiled up at her, the most wondrous thing he was sure he would ever see. He shrugged off his coat carelessly, giddy with his blessed return, leaving behind the tan fabric as he climbed the stairs of his home and scooped Claire into his arms. He would calm his young daughter's fears, then he would wake his wife just to feel her in his arms, and he would never again wish for anything more in his life than this.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

When Castiel returned, it was with a sound so strikingly akin to wingbeats that Sam expected to see giant, feathered appendages behind the angel. However, there were no wings when he spun towards the sudden fourth presence in the Bobby's den. A figure not there a blink ago, now standing just to the side of the desk, causing Bobby, who had his feet propped up, to nearly tumbled out of his chair.

Forget wings, Sam thought. He was too busy staring at the entirely foreign and _very_ different person now in the room with them.

"C-Castiel? Is that you?" he managed through his surprise, which was more than Bobby or Dean accomplished. That might be because Bobby was too busy clinging to the desk, getting all four legs of the chair back on the floor (all the while swearing like sailor) to care much about what poor schmuck the angel had returned in. But Dean certainly wasn't saying much, standing there staring – slack-jawed and wide eyed – at the very female (and definitely not an old geezer) currently watching Bobby with a familiar head tilt and vague concern.

"Yes," the angel replied, turning back to the brothers once she determined the grumbling older hunter was not in need of her assistance.

And it was very, very much _her_ assistance.

Castiel's new vessel was tall for a woman, maybe five eight or nine. She was slim but fit, with dark skin tinted a reddish-brown, the same striking blue eyes as Jimmy, and dark, wavy hair. Sam identified her as likely mixed race, probably Polynesian and Caucasian. She was older than him, for sure. Possibly older than Dean too. Late twenties certainly, early thirties maybe. All of which was secondhand observation, natural to a hunter, and which each man in the room had noticed and filed away in their information-trained minds without really thinking about it.

Sam's active mind was busy with that part where the new human in the room with them was dressed in nothing but a hospital gown. Bobby was pretty busy noticing that too, partly because he had a damn more revealing angle, to which he was very purposefully turning the other cheek, keeping his eyes on anything but the angel's bare ass half a foot from him.

Dean wasn't thinking at all. His brain hadn't rebooted after _most gorgeous woman ever_.

Okay, so maybe she wasn't the _most_ gorgeous woman Dean had ever seen. That honor went to Vera Ellen; the all-American beauty with a German sweetheart face and the grace of a goddess. God, Dean must have watched _White Christmas_ every year it was on TV (even stole a VHS tape once from a Blockbuster when it hadn't been). Every December the 25th, holed up in some dingy motel, with Sammy in his lap and Dad god-knows-where, they'd put on the movie. Vera Ellen was his Christmas mom, each holiday that had passed without his own. She was an angel, in every sense of the word.

And boy, could that woman _dance_. Something Dean would _never, ever, under pain of death_ , admit to falling head over heels in love with. Or ever watching in the first place.

But Castiel's new vessel certainly wasn't the ugly, wrinkled, sagging, _male_ , grandpa Dean had been expecting. Or, unknown to him until just this moment, apparently hoping for. God, her eyes alone. The same damn Novak blue that apparently ran in that friggin' family. Bluer than frickin' _blue_ , which was just ridiculous. They'd been powerful in a good ole, family man like Jimmy. But in this woman, whoever she was, with her sun-darkened skin and stupidly fist-able hair… it just wasn't _fair._

And it wasn't like she was lacking in the other departments, either. That floral-print hospital gown sure didn't show off much, but Dean could tell she was athletically built, trim and fit rather than curvy, muscles filling out and flexing in a way that looked like she'd just worked out (Dean wasn't thinking about that, he _wasn't_ ). His idle brain wondered if this lady trained, or if she was just one of the yoga, health-nut, naturally fit, freak types (okay, so he was totally thinking about that).

Maybe both. Body like that, Dean bet she was pretty damn flexible.

And, oh god, he was killing that line of thought _right the fuck now_. Cuz this was Cas he was thinking about, darn it.

Holy shit. _Holy shit!_

This was _Cas._ This wasn't just some random, hot stranger he was appreciating. This was Cas. _Cas._ Fucking Castiel, Angel of the Lord, Warrior Badass Extreme, Nerdy Angel Tax Accountant _Cas_! In a drop dead gorgeous female vessel. In a drop dead gorgeous, _fuckable_ , vessel.

Hot damn shit _fuck._

He was a terrible person.

He was a friggin _screwed_ , terrible person, was what he was.

Sam was crossing the room with a blanket he'd pulled off the couch, and Dean was able to stop staring at Cas long enough to realize what his brother was doing. He held the fabric out for the angel, making a gesture with quiet words that Dean could only hazard at. Castiel didn't seem to understand the need for it, but allowed the knitted throw to be draped across his shoulders to cover his backside.

' _Her_ , _Dean. HER backside. Her very naked, exposed backside.'_

Dean's eyes were suddenly skyward as he thought of something – anything – other than this woman's naked body. God, he was going to Hell. Again.

Bobby let out a relieved noise as the angel gripped the ends of the blanket and seemed at least on board with the plan, if not understanding why it was necessary. The hunter rolled his eyes as he straightened back up in his desk chair and once more had free reign of looking wherever the hell he wanted in his own house. Now that he could, the angel was the obvious candidate for observation.

"What'd you do, rob the coma ward?" the old hunter groused. Castiel turned at the question, brow pinching as she tried to parse the intent of the man's question. Bobby gestured to the angel's getup with his chin, and she looked down at herself curiously, pulling at the flowered fabric beneath the blanket.

"Yes." The answer was blunt, and left Bobby blinking. Castiel looked back up, releasing the meager clothing she was wearing and locking eyes with Dean, who could only gulp and try to remember how to breathe and, oh god, go back to thinking about _nothing_. "This body was comatose, mortally damaged in a car crash that killed the rest of her family. Her mind was intact, but her body had become a prison. She agreed to serve as my vessel."

Dean was too busy thinking _absolutely nothing,_ while simultaneously trying to look away from those eyes – and shit, shit, _shit_ , they really were the same damn blue eyes and _are you fucking kidding me?_ – to form actual words. Not that he wasn't trying. He really, really was. It's just, despite popular belief, mouth movement required actual thought, and he was trying oh-so-hard _not_ to be thinking anything right then.

While Dean failed to figure out the complexities of human language and _words_ , Castiel frowned and continued, voice a little tighter, "She has no surviving next of kin, or any family left to leave behind. Is she acceptable to your terms?"

' _Hell_ _ **yes**_ _!'_ Little Dean shouted at the same time his bigger head rebuked, ' _fuck no, Cas, I told you to find some old geezer!'_ and what came out of all of that was, "Your eyes are still blue."

What? No, shit, wait, that's not what he meant to say. Sam and Bobby were sending him weird looks now, and he racked his brain for actual words so he could try again.

Castiel tilted her head to the side and, damn it, it was like looking in a friggin' female mirror verse. "This vessel is of the same bloodline as Jimmy Novak. A distant cousin. It was quite fortunate, as vessels are rare and your restrictions were…limiting."

There was definitely a hint of annoyance in there (more than a hint, actually, but this Castiel didn't have the balls to be outright with it. Yet.) and the beginning of a warning tone Dean knew well, even coming from a different mouth. Knowing Castiel well enough to hear the _'I am a Warrior of God, I do not serve you_ ,'and know there was little he could do in the face of it but be cowed, Dean simply nodded. Maybe a little too enthusiastically, looking back on it.

"Yeah. Yeah, it's good- fine. It's _fine._ " And now he was just gushing words like a blushing teenage virgin asked out on her first date. _Awesome_. "Of course it's fine. Thanks, Cas. I- uh, I appreciate it."

He sort of choked on the word, other parts of him trying to speak up about all the other things he was currently _appreciating_ , but he clamped down on those with such vicious discipline that even Sister Marybeth, a teacher at the Catholic school Pastor Jim sent him and Sammy to the spring John left them in his care, would have been proud. That sanctimonious bitch.

There was another pause. Sam was still watching him with a _look._ Bobby was just rolling his eyes like it was an Olympic sport. Then Castiel nodded and they, _thank fuck_ , moved on.

Dean let out the biggest breath of his life, though he had to do it subtly, lest Cas – or, god forbid, _Sammy_ – notice. The conversation continued without him, while Dean spent far too long thinking of ghouls and Hell and dead puppies and _autopsies_ , until his upstairs head was the one back in control and he could rejoin the discussion as an actual decent human being.

God, he was so _screwed_.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/Ns:** That's about as in depth as we'll get for Miss Angela Garrett, other than the how-to-act-like-a-human input she'll have for Cas, since she's a mostly awake vessel (and the absolutely guaranteed 'nice butt' remark she'll have about Dean) __That's about as bad as we'll get on Dean's hots for Angela, as well. He'll struggle for a while, but nothing's going to be as bad as first-meeting-in-a-thin-mostly-naked-hospital-gown._

 _- **Up Next** : It's time to get planning. Dean's got his angel on board and a time-advisor, now it's time to put him- er, *her* - to use, at least before she returns to Heaven. Wait, whut? Cas can't return to Heaven! (although it might do Dean's blood pressure some good)  
_


	47. Season 2: Chapter 14

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Pronouns:**_ _Alright, get ready for this to get confusing. While Castiel is in a female vessel, the narrator (that's me!) will be referring to him as she/her. However, when Dean is the one thinking or bleeding into the narration, he'll still identify Cas as he/his. So there is gonna be some flip-flopping around, and hopefully it reads clearly as the difference between Dean being obstinate and the narrator actually knowing which gender that angel is currently wearing. (Which is only if I don't fuck up...which I absolutely will, cuz I've already caught three of them and counting -_-)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** Dean's having problems, Cas is getting new clothes, Bobby's seeing even more of an angel (that he asked to see less of) than before, and Sam can't decide between enjoying his brother's dilemma or lecturing him right into the ground for it._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 14

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

There was a lot for them to sort out. The first of which was _clothes_. Clothes that actually met in the back with full coverage all three hundred and sixty degrees. God damn but did Dean need those clothes. Needed full coverage. Head to toe, maybe. That would be good.

Guess he owed the Puritans an apology: turned out, ankles could be _very_ sexy.

Of course, of the three occupants in the house, Dean's clothes were the closest in size. That wasn't saying much, given the new vessel – Angela (and _Christ_ , her name was seriously _Angel_ aReally – was still several inches shorter and far slimmer than the hunter, even with her athletic build. Which meant that whole three hundred and sixty degrees of coverage did a whole lot less when it was a pair of worn jeans (cinched tight with a belt they'd added an extra hole to) and an old Zepplin shirt doing the covering.

That was Dean's wet dream right there. Angel or not. Too-big clothes or not. A hot woman with bed-tussled hair (wind-tussled, but really, not much difference there) wearing one of his oldest and most favorite band shirts.

God, he was so screwed.

Bobby had been the one both brothers unanimously volunteered to help the angel get dressed, seeing as Castiel had never done so before. Dean was an obvious no-go and he disinvited himself to that shindig right away. Sam had put the full effect of the puppy-eyes to work until the old hunter just swore under his breath, grumbled about how he was too friggin' old for this, and grabbed the angel by the elbow to lead her to the first floor bathroom, clothes in hand. Which left the two brothers alone in a now noticeably quiet house.

Dean realized his mistake almost instantly. He should have made Sam go.

"Dude."

The words were barely out of his brother's mouth before Dean was snapping back, "I know, shut up."

" _Dude_." Sam aimed those big eyes his way and fired away with _The Look_.

"I said shut it, Sammy."

His snot-nosed little brother put his hands on his hips like some kind of disappointed soccer mom and Dean was rolling his eyes before the lecture even started. "I've seen you bad, Dean, but I've never seen you _this_ distracted."

"Well, Cas shouldn't have come back looking so damn distracting!"

 _The Look_ doubled in strength, but petered off at the tips with just a slightly too-high eyebrow that Dean picked up on right away. He waved a hand, perhaps a little too animatedly, in the direction of the bathroom door. "You're seriously going to stand there and tell me she's not gorgeous?"

That too-high eyebrow got a little higher and his brother gave an awkward, embarrassed little shrug. "I mean…sure, she's pretty, but…"

"Unbelievable." Dean's posture deflated like a hot air balloon with a hole straight through its guts. He stared at his brother and wondered how it was they were even related. "There are so many things wrong with you."

"Me?" Sam balked, _the Look_ finally giving way under a wave of exasperated amusement. And disapproving amusement, too, of course; Mother Samantha didn't give up the fight that easily. "I'm not the one drooling when I try to talk."

"Thought I told you to _shut up_."

The bathroom door opened with a loud creek, ending their discussion extra permanent style as Bobby ambled out with rosy-tinted cheeks, shutting the door quickly behind him before either brother could glimpse the angel still inside. Despite desperately wanting to turn the conversation onto anything but his own current embarrasment, Dean wouldn't touch Bobby's blushing with a forty foot pole.

He liked living, thank you very much.

-o-o-o-

The second thing they ended up discussing was Dean himself, despite the fact that every fiber in the man's being was busy playing ignorant, swimming knee-deep in denial, or (eventually) kicking and screaming as he was dragged forcefully out of that river by a scary hot nerd angel.

See, Dean had a problem. And for once it wasn't an Apocalypse, or a crisis, or a hunt they couldn't figure out. No, this was an entirely new problem, a first for Dean Winchester in a long history of other problems, and one he had no idea how to handle.

Dean's body wanted to bone Cas's body, and that was a _serious friggin' problem._

The hunter had always been one to… _appreciate_ a beautiful woman. In fact, he was known for it. Had that look, some ladies said. It got him laid more often than not, and he took no offense to those women who took offense; at least he laid it out to bare – just looking for a good time here, no strings attached – and didn't bother with anything more than his looks and his hot-blooded male need to get him there (and certainly her, too; he was all about equal fun). Problem was, he'd never had to hold himself back. It was an 'are you in or out' question, half the time not even verbalized, at a local dive bar with a gorgeous woman he'd probably never see again. Holding himself back wasn't a necessity when one-night-stand shopping at some hole in the wall. So Dean had never seen a reason to shy away from _appreciating_.

Unfortunately, none of his encounters had ever been an angel in a hot vessel (and not one of those wearing some back-ass ugly suit like they _all_ somehow did. What, did vessels only come in cheap salesmen?!) who didn't know how to give his body that blatant ' _not interested'_ signal it very very desperately needed. Dean was great with boundaries. Fan-freaking-tastic, actually. Apparently, he was so good with them that his body didn't know how to _back the fuck down_ with anything less than the universal ' _down, boy'_ that every woman in every bar seemed to know.

So now, Dean had a problem. A very _large_ problem, if he did say so himself (and, of course, he did, so he would).

In a male vessel, or even when that vessel had become his own body, Castiel stood stiff and unmoving, always, but in a lost sort of way. Like he didn't know how to stand still, but standing still was the only thing he knew to do. With Jimmy, it gave him a softer edge than the rest of his dick brothers. A socially awkward side that kind of won people to him; got waitresses to call him honey and sweetheart. Old ladies always offered him iced tea and inquired about his marital status (for their granddaughters, of course). It made him, well, not approachable in the slightest unless you were middle aged and female, but more approachable than any of the other halos. It made him a nerdy little angel.

In this body it was downright distracting. The slight downward curvature of her tightly drawn shoulders: the twitch of a finger: the unblinking stare that saw straight through your bullshit and into your soul. It screamed lost, maybe a little bit crazy, but a whole lot of _hot_. Those legs spread just ever so slightly wide in a fighter's stance, ready to defend at any moment or stand solid for hours. The head tilt, now complete with a wave of hair that would slide off a cotton covered shoulder. Sometimes strands would get stuck on her t-shirt and Dean just wanted to brush them back and then curl his hand around the back of that slim neck, hair caught in his fingers before he'd lean in and-

"Dean!"

Dean jerked back to reality when his brother's foot connectedly solidly with his shin and he hissed at the sharp jolt. "Jeez, _what_?"

His gaze darted from staring off into space to his brother and back again, only to realize Cas was the space he'd been staring at. Or, well, _through,_ since it really wasn't the angel he'd been seeing. Nope, he'd been seeing Angela Garret. Definitely just angela, not the angel. At. All.

Cas, standing just over Sam's shoulder at the kitchen table, was staring right back with those bright, ocean eyes. The Samsquatch in front of him was pulling one hell of a bitchface (#3, _'Grow up, Dean.')_ Castiel leaned around him to brace an arm on the table surface stiffly, hand splayed out on the table. It was an awkward enough move to draw even Sam's attention and raised brow to the arm just over his shoulder and up to the fiercely stoic angel, who didn't seem aware of the oddity.

Dean didn't really notice either. Cuz now he was staring at her damn perfect cleavage, positioned right at eye level, two friggin' feet away. Damnit, T-shirts weren't even supposed to be revealing, and this one wasn't an exception. How the hell was she making his old, worn out clothes _sexy_?

God, he was _so_ screwed.

"This is the third time now that you are displaying physical stressors, Dean." That deep, raspy voice brought him back to the present again, and Dean snapped his eyes back to Castiel's face. "Your temperature has risen, your heart rate has increased, and blood is flowing to your-"

Dean was up and out of the chair in a millisecond flat, the wooden legs scraping across the cheap linoleum loudly enough to cut the angel short.

"Can I talk to you? Outside? Now As in _right this instant._ "

He didn't wait for an answer, instead moving around the table and heading for the screen door. He kicked Samantha in the shin as he passed him, his snot-nosed kid brother trying and failing to hide his smug, laughing face. "Shut it, bitch."

Castiel followed him outside, the amused, "Jerk" making it through the door before it slammed shut behind them.

"Dean, I do not understand. You are not physically unwell. I don't sense any sickness in you. But you're flushed and breathing heavily-"

"Jesus, Cas, just stop! You can't – Christ, you can't say that sort of stuff. Especially in front of- of Sam. Or Bobby! Or anyone!"

Castiel's eyes narrowed. "I was merely listing the symptoms of whatever is affecting you."

"You're affecting me!" Damn it, that's _not_ what he meant to say. Dean closed his eyes and took a deep breath, counting to ten as he did, and then doing it again in Latin just for the hell of it. Lot of good it was doing him. "Yeah, I get it, but don't. Don't list symptoms, don't try to find something wrong with me. Just ignore it, alright? I'm fine."

Castiel took a step forward, eyes still narrow. Dean gulped on instinct, taking a step back as the angel got dangerously close to putting his very, _very_ nice, new body flush against him. _Her_ body. Damn it. Dean took another step back, but Castiel met him inch for inch. Those eyes all but solidified with realization and Dean wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

"You are experiencing sexual arousal in the presence of this vessel."

"N-No! No, I'm not." Dean stumbled back more forcefully this time. God, he needed some space. That famous personal space issue that had always been a thing with Cas was now a _very real issue_. "That's not it. I'm not."

Oh good. Very intelligent defense there, Dean. Real mature. Next he'd be telling Cas _'I know_ _ **you**_ _are, but what am I?'_

"You are," Castiel insisted, her words clashing with Dean's inner whining so hard it took him a moment to figure out what she was insisting he was. Oh, right. Getting a hard on in front of her. How could he forget?

Cas's eyes trailed down Dean's body (and _damn it_ , that was _not_ helping), then glanced down at her own. "Is it an appealing physical form?" She placed her hand on the flat of her stomach experimentally and then, good god, she started moving her hand down across the flat plane of Angela's torso, smoothing the wrinkles in the black t-shirt. Holy fuck, it wasn't even sexy. It really wasn't. It was _awkward as hell_ , is what it was. Still, Dean couldn't breathe.

He needed a fucking vacation, he decided, as he spun around to look _anywhere_ else.

"Cas, god, will you just _stop_?" He shot over his shoulder, letting out a deep, frustrated groan as he ran his hands through his hair and refused to turn back around. "When I said comatose, I was thinking some ancient, decrepit, old bag! Not…Not…" He waved his hand awkwardly over his shoulder to gesture at her slim, soft form. "It's not my fault you chose Miss Fucking Hawaii and every man's tropical wet dream! Couldn't you have gone for something a little less _distracting?_ "

And if it had to be female, could she at least be a lot less like Jimmy Novak? Damn it, it was only the eyes, really. And maybe a little bit the wind-swept, dark hair. And okay, maybe also the structure of their faces, and the way they both stood, and also- _god damn it!_ It only made this situation all the more fucked up. Like wanting to bang your best friend's sister. That was just wrong – you didn't do that to your friends.

"Dean."

Oh no. Even in a new body with new vocal chords – and shit, she even sounded raspy and deep and gravely and like pure fucking sex (great, like Jimmy there, too – no, wait, he _did not just think that_. _Fuck!_ He thought of it in a _porno_ way. Like the way dudes talked in _pornos_ , damnit) – Dean still knew that voice. That was the warrior of God, you-will-respect-me-or-I-will-throw-you-back-into-Hell voice. Only Cas had ever made a vessel sound quite like that. Not even Michael, or Uriel, or a pissed off Gabe had nailed it quite like his angel could.

Castiel was right behind him when he turned around and he swallowed thickly at the intensity of that hard, angry stare only inches from his face.

Oh god, that was _hot_. Scary and hot, and son of a bitch, he was so damn screwed.

"Vessels are not easy to come by, and even less so with your criteria. We are incredibly fortunate that such circumstances existed at all, and that she was willing to say yes." Dean leaned back as she leaned forward, right into his personal space, and that was going to be a whole new conversation this time around apparently. "I am sorry this form does not fit your aesthetical wishes, but you will learn to _control yourself_."

Attempting to swallow was about all he was good for now (and he was steadfastly ignoring the rest of his brain, which had taken its cue from his little head and was busy listing all the ways he'd _fit in_ _ **your**_ _aesthetical-_ no, no, just shut up little Dean! The adults are talking now, _damn it_ ). Reduced to a blathering, speechless mess once more, Dean just nodded hastily.

Castiel straightened, giving him some much needed breathing room, which he gasped at greedily. "Good. We should resume our planning against the Apocalypse."

With that, she spun on her bare heel and left Dean, shell-shocked, breathing hard, and still very much aroused in the middle of the junkyard.

Right. Don't piss off the scary-hot nerd angel.

-o-o-o-

The third matter that came up quickly and with no preparedness on the boys' behalf, actually involved the Apocalypse and their next steps. That was that Castiel wasn't staying. Silver lining? It was a bonafide boner-killer if Dean had ever heard one. Before a fight could break out, which is exactly where it was headed the second Dean got that angry look on his face and opened his mouth, Sam cut in with the much more reasonable request of _'Why?'_

"I cannot remain absent from Heaven for long," she answered. There was a regretful look on her face (which, at least for now, was only decipherable from stoicism by Dean alone) that might have been a balm to Dean's simmering anger and immediate disapproval, if not for the fact that right alongside it was a slightly relieved look, too.

Dean tried damn hard not to get bitchy about that, but he couldn't _help_ it. All the other angels up in heaven were dicks, and Cas was just going to learn the hard way how much they'd let him down.

 _Her_ , Dean. Let _her_ down.

"I'm not supposed to be here, as it is," Cas continued. "Leaving Heaven is currently forbidden, and my absence will eventually be noticed."

Biting his tongue in response to that, Dean managed to let some of his angry annoyance slide away without having to voice it aloud. He knew what disobedience meant for an angel, and like he'd told Castiel at the start of this, Heaven couldn't know what they were up to. He'd prefer Cas to just risk it down here – screw Heaven – but he knew Heaven well enough to know they'd never let it fly. They'd come after him, soft at first, then hard when he refused, and either way that ended in Heaven way too close to their business far too early in the timeline.

So if they had to play it slow and Cas had to stick it out undercover up in doucheland to avoid reeducation or heaven meddling too soon, then that's what they'd do. They'd make it work.

Still sucked, though, and Dean didn't like it one bit.

"Will you be able to come back?" Sam asked worriedly. Dean hadn't gone into a ton of detail on Heaven or their rules, but he understood well enough what they were asking Cas to do here, and he was pretty sure it was an imprisonable offense. If what she was doing on Earth was discovered while she was up there, Sam wasn't sure how they'd possibly get her back.

He knew Dean was worried enough about Cas spilling the beans out of a sense of duty; Sam could only imagine that risk tripled in the face of disciplinary action or what he suspected Dean had been hinting at: torture.

"I will try," Castiel responded, turning her gaze to the younger of the two brothers as she answered him. And yeah, Dean had been right, that look was _intense_. The change in vessel certainly hadn't changed that. "I cannot guarantee when or how often, but if it is an emergency, I will come."

"How you gonna know it's an emergency?" Bobby called out from behind the desk, looking entirely skeptical about this whole thing. Castiel regarded him with that heavy confusion again, as if trying to decide which question the human was asking: how would she know they weren't lying about the urgency, or how would she know they needed her help?

"I think he means, how do we get a hold of you?" Sam translated, as ever the referee among his often caustic family members.

"You can pray to me." Cas turned back to Sam, a slight nod of her head that he assumed meant she appreciated the translation help, which in turn made his smile a little more real.

" _Pray_?" Bobby didn't sound doubting so much as incredulous. He checked in with Dean, eyebrows raised, but the human only nodded back in confirmation.

"I will hear you," Castiel confirmed. "Though it would be wise to direct your prayers specifically to me, otherwise the rest of the host will be able to you hear as well."

"Dear Cas, who art be in Heaven," Dean said, arms spread wide, "please get your feathery ass down here as soon as possible."

Castiel stared at the human, who eventually dropped his arms back to his sides. The angel's eyes were narrowed, as though she suspected Dean was making fun of her, but wasn't entirely sure. She didn't seem the type to call him on it, though. "Yes, that has worked several times now, however, prayers should generally be more _respectful_."

Sam snorted at the way the angel directed the last words in his and Bobby's direction, as if she'd already given up all hope of Dean ever doing that. Maybe there was something to be said about the two knowing each other.

"Wait, you heard all those?" Dean pulled them back into the first part of Cas's words, a slightly angry frown pulling at his lips. "What the hell, Cas! If you could hear me all this time, why the hell didn't you answer?"

"Dude," Sam cautioned, eyeing his brother sidelong with a look that said _'be polite'_. But Dean wasn't feeling very polite, and he sure as hell wasn't going to listen to his brother play diplomat in a conversation he only knew half of. Dean had damn near broken down and _begged_ in some of those prayers. "She just told us she couldn't leave Heaven."

At the same time, Castiel responded, "I did."

That silenced the room, all eyes turning on the stoic angel, standing in the center of the room like a brick wall.

Sam was the first to put two and two together. "The Baku?"

Bobby sat upright in his chair, pulling his leg off the edge of the desk, suddenly all ears, because that had happened in _his_ house, and he sure as hell didn't remember an angel showing up in the middle of that shit-show.

"What do you mean, the baku?" Dean echoed, glancing between Sam and Cas and pulling his head back in a bitchface of his own when the angel nodded a yes. "You were _there_?"

"She killed it," Sam offered, jerking his chin in Cas's direction. "Dad and I were trapped, and it was feeding on him."

The white light in the dream world. The explosion that had knocked Dad and Sam out of the dream, that they hadn't had an explanation for. _That_ had been Castiel?

Sam shrugged helplessly, and Dean knew that gesture. It was the classic, hunter's what-are-you-gonna-do, close-call shrug, which left the older brother with a weight in his stomach. He'd known the Baku had been a close one, but honestly he'd been pretty occupied with Meg and the whole DeLorean slipup with Bobby. Maybe he hadn't realized how close it actually had been for his brother and dad.

"You cannot kill a Baku," Castiel corrected, watching the silent conversation happening between the brothers with a slight head tilt. "I purified it, returning it to its original state. The beast should go back to consuming only nightmares."

"That's comforting," Bobby muttered under his breath. The thing had clearly gone off the reservation once, what was to stop it from going there again, hurting future humans and causing a headache for some shit-luck hunter down the road.

"If you were there, you could have said something," Dean complained at the same time, crossing his arms over his chest from where he leaned against the corner of Bobby's desk, a petulant glare on his face that had Sam pulling Bitchface #3 again.

"I intended to." The only reason Castiel had been there at all had been in response to the man's prayers, some of them downright confusing, others particularly troubling, and more than a few _annoying_. Then there hadn't been time. "A mass of demons followed and attacked before I was able to."

" _You're_ the reason that damn swarm showed up?" Bobby's eyes were wide, and he glanced back at Dean, who looked just as clueless. They never had figured out why that weird congregation of smoke demons attacked the house, or left just as suddenly.

Something triggered in Dean's memory, muddled by pain and gaps of consciousness. Azazel had said something about an angel touching down and bolting the hell out of there shortly afterward. Of course, that had been right before he'd shoved his hand straight into Dean's chest. Everything after that was a mass of pain and, oh yeah, _explosions_. A quick glance Sam's way showed the kid not exactly surprised, so Dean was fairly certain he hadn't imagined that in a pain-filled delirium. The demon bastard must have been talking about Cas.

"I had to draw them away before they damaged the house, or any of you," Castiel confirmed in Bobby's direction, though she spared a glance Dean's way as well, as if to say _'is that a good enough reason for you, human_?'

Given that Dean was still struggling to keep his thoughts straight anytime that look turned his way (it was damn distracting and just a little too intense coming from a pretty face) it took him a minute to cross his arms over his chest and glare right back. If Dean was good at only one thing, that thing was burying just about anything under a heft mask of petulance.

"You could have come back once you shook them. That was weeks ago, Cas. Not like you to give up because a couple demons got in your way."

Sam was staring at him with that familiar warning in his wide-open gaze that said _'shut up, Dean, before you piss the super powerful angel off_.' Dean ignored him and he also ignored the fact that he was pretty sure Sam was at least a little right. He knew he was acting like a butt-hurt jerk rather than the competent Righteous Man he'd told Cas he needed to leave Heaven for.

Oh, yeah, except the angel was going _right back up there_. Again.

So fair's fair.

Castiel's expression grew stormy. And not your average summer storm with dark but somehow pretty clouds approaching on the horizon. This was hurricane level, run for the bunker out back, category five twister face. The hair on his arms actually stood up, and Dean took a half step back before he realized it, arms uncrossing in surprise because, while Castiel was often brooding or intense, he was very rarely angry. At least, not in the Righteous Man's direction.

Phantom pain flashed up Dean's cheek and he wondered if this was about to be a repeat of that alley all those years ago when he'd given up on saying 'No' any longer and sort of broke his best friend in the process.

"I lost one of my brother's in that attack," the angel rumbled and the house practically shook with it. Castiel was, indeed, angry. Balthazar had been her _friend_ , one of her closest brethren, and it was her fault that he had perished on an unsanctioned mission. A mindless, unimportant _curiosity_. A petulant, irreverent one at that. "So no, I could not simply return to answer one human's irreverent prayers."

Dean swallowed against that anger and, even more so, at his friend's sorrow. He could see it through the furious blue eyes. He knew Castiel; knew how the angel loved his brothers, even those that had turned on him, those that tried to kill him, that hated him. Still, he had loved them and mourned their deaths, each and every one. Dean could imagine the grief and the guilt he was feeling now (struggling to feel, because this was Angels-Don't-Have-Emotions-Cas and not the angel that had finally embraced the fact that _yes they did_ ), when his brother's death was a result of answering a human's prayers against orders.

"I'm sorry, Castiel." Sam's condolence was heartfelt, as only that mushy moose could be, and Castiel turned towards him with a slight pinch in her brow. This was a completely different person, who looked utterly different from James Novak, and yet the expression was still so friggn _Cas_.

"Yeah, me too," Dean offered as well, scratching the back of his scalp for a second for lack of anything better to do with his arms. He meant it thought. He didn't like most of Cas's family, but that didn't mean he didn't understand mourning for them.

Unfortunately for them all, he'd met so many of Cas's dick brothers (and Cas had so many dick brothers) that Dean didn't even think to ask which one it had been.

Castiel regarded both of them for a solid minute before inclining her head in a small, but accepting nod. After all, Balthazar's death was not Dean's fault. Neither angel had thought Earth was going to be dangerous, either.

The silence persisted for another moment, perhaps a pause in respect for the angel's fallen kin, before Bobby cleared his throat. "We gonna get back to the apocalypse, then?"

Cas turned awkward to him, neck and shoulders stiffening as she fell back into soldier mode. "Yes. It would be wise to discuss our next moves, and for you to….catch me up."

The storm abated, and Dean allowed himself a little quirk of a smile at the angel's first attempt at an idiom. He'd make sure there were more to come.

-o-o-o-

Bobby kept them on track through the next six attempted arguments – three settled on Castiel returning to heaven, two on their next move (find Azazel and kill him, find Lilith and kill her, at least in Dean's opinion, that was), and the final one a cumulated result of the previous five.

"You cannot do any of those things," the angel insisted, tone as close to annoyed as a pre-apocalypse, pre-sarcasm Castiel would ever get. Dean rolled his eyes – his third time in as many minutes – and Sam hit him in the bicep, wearing a patented bitchface, before he could open his mouth to start argument number seven, smack dab in the middle of argument number six. "As I have said several times, you need to stick as closely to the previous timeline as possible."

"Cuz some things just have to stay the same, huh?" Dean bit out, voice hostile and bitter with something Castiel did not understand, which only resulted in an unblinking head tilt. The man from the future bristled at it for reasons the angel also did not understand.

"Yes," she insisted tone as strong as that stance Cas always took, whether he was in an argument or standing in the middle of the bunker accepting a beer. Dean supposed that solidity hadn't really eased up until the angel had gone full human. Which brought up unpleasant memories he didn't have time to deal with now, so he shoved all of it right back down. "Time _can_ be bent, but it is difficult, and the further you bend it, the harder the recoil will be. The tighter you attempt to hold on, the more cracks will appear in the timeline. Cracks that will be filled with unpredictable change."

"You wouldn't have sent me back if it couldn't be done," Dean challenged, and Sam resisted the urge to hit him again. The older Winchester was bouncing between barely being able to use his tongue and his brain at the same time and unwarranted hostility towards the angel. Sam didn't have a clue what was going on in his brother's head, but they were going to be lucky if he didn't chase Cas away permanently before they'd even gotten started.

"Calm down, ya idjit," Bobby interrupted, sending Dean a chastising look that actually did a lot more than anything coming from Sam had in the past hour. "No one's saying it can't be done. Right?"

Castiel seemed surprised to be on the receiving end of that question and Bobby's own intense stare (it was the eyebrows). The minute it took for the angel to formulate her answer was probably as much from the unexpectedness of it as it was trying to work out which answer was correct for the hunter's Midwestern double negative. It was rather fitting that the overly formal angel ended up going with an uncertain, "…Right."

Sam's little huff and quirk of his lips meant he'd caught that too.

"Changes are possible, but you will need to tread very carefully." Castiel met each of their gazes individually, her tone both incredibly serious and that of a kindergarten teacher slow-speaking to make sure her kids actually understood English before she moved on with the lesson. Sam thought it was fitting, given Dean was among her audience, but kept that little thought to himself, since he'd already made it clear they were trying to avoid further arguments. "Any deliberate alterations to the timeline will have to be small and few, with as little impact as possible and as far apart as possible."

"How the hell do we stop the Apocalypse with _small impacts_?" Dean was being purposefully argumentative. Not outside the range of normal for Dean, really, but definitely more riled up than usual. Sam was pretty sure he knew the cause, and it was the angel standing in front of them, prepping them like a mission report because she wasn't going to be present for the rest of the mission.

"You said Lilith was the final seal to release Lucifer." Castiel focused her gaze primarily on Dean. "Then you should focus your changes solely on her. If you're going to avert the Apocalypse-"

" _We,_ Cas!" Dean's unexpected explosion, which was, admittedly, not that unexpected for Sam or Bobby but still louder than they'd had been hoping for, startled Castiel enough that her jaw clacking shut was audible. "Damn it, we're in this together, it's _us_ against the Apocalypse! Not me, not Sam. _Us!"_

"Dean," Sam cautioned, a mix of warning and understanding. His older brother dropped his shoulders but kept the clenched jaw that Sam knew well. Dean was well aware he owed an apology for that outburst, but Cas wasn't going to get one.

"Of course," the angel answered, eyes still wide from the abrupt scolding. There was another moment of silence as Castiel judged whether she'd chosen the right response to the volatile human she seemed to know more about than she should, and yet absolutely nothing at the same time. "If…we are going to avert the Apocalypse, we will need to remove Lilith from the equation."

"Kill her?" Bobby asked gruffly, an eyebrow raised. "How the hell are we supposed to kill Lucifer's first born? That ain't no spring chicken we're talking about."

"No, she is certainly not a…chicken. However, she is still a demon, and can be killed like any other. She is also our best chance at ending this before it begins." Castiel cast a sidelong glance at Dean, though he was back to brooding on his side of the den. "We will need to arrange for her death in a situation completely apart from the events surrounding the Apocalypse."

Sam frowned at that, curious brow puzzled atop his intelligent brown eyes. "We need to make it look like an accident?"

Castiel tilted her head slightly, thinking. "Not necessarily, but the less it looks like a result of Hell attempting to raise Lucifer, the more likely Time will accept the new path."

"So, a death random enough that no one, including Time – like that's a _thing_ – puts two and two together with us trying to stop the end of the world." Bobby's second eyebrow had joined the first up near his hairline.

"Precisely."

"Great." Bobby shared a more than doubting look with Dean, who wasn't too cranky yet to return it. "And how do we do that, exactly?"

"I am-" Castiel hesitated for a moment, eyes darting like she was listening to something else, head tilting ever so slightly to match. "…working on it."

Bobby snorted. "Wouldn't it just be easier for Dean not to make a deal that lands his ass in Hell and breaks the first seal?"

All eyes turned on him, and Dean frowned, pinching his face and pulling his head back at his family. "I already promised not to, what more do you want?"

"I do not think we should wager the fate of the planet on a promise," Castiel responded evenly, and Dean whipped quite the insulted look her way, though he knew the angel hadn't meant it that way. Still. Ouch. "Demons can be clever and terribly creative. They will find another way to fulfill the conditions of the seal, should Dean's resilience hold."

"It will," the man from the future mumbled under his breath, though even he couldn't deny that the words held way more confidence than any other part of him, soul and conscience included.

"For now, you should stick to the original timeline as closely as you can," Castiel reiterated, straightening to her full height. "Do not do anything out of the ordinary. I will formulate a strategy to alter time as little as possible, but I will need an intimate knowledge of what is coming."

Dean looked at Bobby, who sighed and leaned over to jerkily pull open the top drawer of his desk. He drew out the legal pad, curling yellow pages covered in his scrawled hand, and plopped it down on the desk.

"Knock yourself out," he offered, to which the angel, though confused, ultimately decided against pointing out how counterproductive such an action would be.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/N:**_ _if you were thinking Angela was the one to suggest leaning over the table and putting the ladies in view – to the confusion of a very lost but obedient Castiel – then you would be absolutely right ;) And eventually we'll get a little more of her voice, next time we switch to Cas's narration-bleed-through._

 ** _-Review Replies:_** _I am way behind once again, but should be able to catch up with most of you throughout the day, so if you haven't heard from me yet, I'm coming, I'm coming! :) Thank you, as always, to those of you review and I hope you quieter folk are still enjoying. Thanks for reading!_

 _ **-Pollyp0429:** You get a rare, in-story review reply (because I can't PM you). Thank you for your offer of beta-reading! Unfortunately, between my slow-writing, slow-editing, and lack of free time, I currently don't have time to get in a beta-read of a chapter before it goes up on a Sunday :P I'm lucky if I'm editing by Friday night (and I'm a neurotic, perfectionist, insecure control freak, so a chapter would still have to go through a personal edit before I could hand it off) However, thank you very much for the offer and please PM me sometime because I'd love to discuss more with you. Even if I can't find time to squeeze in an editor, you could help me bounce some ideas around instead, if that sounds cool! :) _

**_-Up Next:_** _Cas has a lot of an Apocalypse to read up on, Bobby's calling it a night (morning), and Dean's finally talking about a future that's more than five years away while Sam eavesdrops when he should be sleeping. Oh, and Cas learns about Star Trek, of all things._


	48. Season 2: Chapter 15

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Pronoun Reminder:**_ _Quick reminder that Dean is still messing up pronouns. So if Cas is referred to with his/he/him in a paragraph that is primarily full of Dean thinking, then it's likely on purpose. However, I'm sure there's at least one him/he/his in there that isn't on purpose, and for that I say 'my bad.' Darn you, pronouns! (Darn you, decision-to-turn-Cas-into-a-girl!)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:**_ _Dean and Cas have a quiet moment filled with way too much pain, alcohol, and familiarity. Sam's an eavesdropper and Castiel learns how to lie like they do on television._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 15

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"I do not understand this," Castiel spoke up from her spot standing in front of the desk. She hadn't so much as moved, let alone sat down, while flipping through page after page of the notes Bobby had taken on the soon to be End Times.

"Which part?" Dean groused miserably, nursing a new glass of whiskey from where he half sat on top of the cluttered desk. He'd already gone through the crap his life had been – was going to be – twice, damnit. He really didn't want to do it a third.

What he wanted was to catch his precious four hours of (if he was lucky) dreamless sleep and call it a night. Well, morning, now. It was five fifteen am; Sam was snoring on the couch where he'd unintentionally fallen asleep and Bobby had called it quits two hours ago, telling them to wake him up if it was an emergency, otherwise it could wait until the sun had friggin' come back up. Cas had assured him that they had that long, at least, before she needed to return.

But if Cas was headed back to Heaven, then Dean didn't have time for a full night's sleep, or any sleep. They were on a time limit the hunter hadn't seen coming and was nowhere near prepared for. So it wasn't like he'd be able to pass out with anything even resembling rest right now.

"This, here, shortly before Lilith is killed." Castiel pointed to the part on the page in question, tilting it slightly in Dean's direction. Not that he could read Bobby's scrawl from a foot and a half away. Man should have been a doctor with handwriting like that. "Sam was contained in Bobby Singer's panic room in an attempt to clear the toxins from his blood. But the next entry states he reconvened with the demon Ruby."

"Yeah, well, that's what happened," Dean grumped, downing the last of his whiskey wretchedly. "What about it?"

"How did your brother get out? I have inspected the panic room myself. It is brilliantly constructed and could easily function as a prison. Withdrawal from demon blood as severe as these notes suggest would have left Sam disoriented, likely hallucinating and fevered. He couldn't have escaped on his own."

Dean rolled his shoulders, leaning back across the desk to swipe the dwindling bottle of alchol to refill his drink. Rather than answer, he went back to wallowing into the amber liquid. It wasn't that he didn't know the answer, or suspect it, at least. Though they never had figured it out for sure, Dean had his suspicions.

Cas stared at him, waiting, and his gaze eventually slid to the drink in his hand. Now rocking a decent buzz, probably on his way to being well and drunk, Dean didn't know if that look was more judgmental coming from a woman's face than Jimmy's. Maybe he was just putting it there himself, imagining the disapproval like some sort of stupid internal-self-depricating-projecting bullshit. Whatever, Sam would know the fancy psychology term.

Castiel's eyes met his once more and that head tilted in a familiar way.

"Told you not to do that, Cas," he grumbled, annoyed at the angel currently reading his mind. Or 'surface thoughts' as she'd called them. They'd had the talk (twice now) about how very much humans liked their privacy and personal space. So far, the results of the discussion had amounted to about as much as the first time Dean and Cas had the talk. Which was to say, there were no results, at all.

"How else do you propose I get answers, if you won't tell me them?"

Dean snorted into his drink at the sass. This Cas was picking up _fast_. Maybe introducing the idea of rebellion earlier meant the angel was taking it to heart a lot quicker this time around. Or maybe a female vessel came with female bitchiness.

The man from the future frowned down at his drink. That was mean, and not entirely fair. Dean was often an asshole, but he wasn't usually a dick, too.

"You're the only one that made sense," he said instead, answering the angel's original question as some sort of mental compromise for thinking dick thoughts.

"What?" Cas blinked in surprise and it was clear she didn't understand what he was getting at.

"You're the only one who could have let Sam out of the panic room. Thought about it, almost asked you a couple times, but by then it was in the past and we had bigger things to worry about." Namely, his brother going off the deep, deep, deep end and almost taking the world with him. "And you were so damn guilty the next time I saw you. Kept looking at me like you ran over my dog and were gonna do it again."

Dean swore softly, remembering that terrible, stupid, gaudy room he'd been trapped in and the look Cas had sent his way when he insisted he could not help. When he stood behind Zachariah like some lackey and just let kickoff to the end of the world happen. Dean had been pissed, for so many reasons, not least of which was the realization that at some point over that year since an angel had pulled him out of hell, he'd started thinking of Cas as a friend.

A friend who had betrayed them for some douchebag in a suit with bad hair and worse breath who clearly didn't give a shit about him.

"I don't know how Sam got out," Dean continued, refusing to look at those wide eyes staring at him, horror growing in their stupidly blue depths. "But the only thing that fits is you let him."

Castiel was stunned. She didn't know if the man was lying, didn't bother trying to find out, because she saw no motive for him to. Dean very desperately wanted the angel on their side, that much was clear, despite his irritable behavior towards her over the last several hours. Behavior that Castiel was certainly not versed enough in human emotions to decipher. However, lying about her role in Sam's release was far more likely to push her away, which Dean knew, as that fear was currently twisting through his mind like a parasite.

"I heralded in the Apocolypse?"

Dean snorted, muttering something along the lines of, ' _like you were the only one.'_

She looked back down at the notes that, until that point, had not had a lot of her in them at all. She'd played nothing more than Heaven's messenger to Dean, as far as she could tell, until she had betrayed Heaven and escaped the holding room with the hunter in two. Before that, Castiel was a mouthpiece of heavenly intent most of the time with the solitary exception of not destroying a town unfortunate enough to fall with a doomed seal.

It seemed unlikely that she would bow to Dean's whim against Heaven's command in order to save a handful of innocent humans, only to turn around and release the one man who could unleash their deaths anyway. The first decision sounded frighteningly like her – enough so that she waited for that English lilt to pipe up from the back of her conscience, but the ghost of her dead brother had not spoken since she'd asked him to leave her be – but the latter decision certainly did not. And she had been giving quite a lot of thought in the last six hours as to what she could and could not do when it came to the survival of the human race.

"Heaven made you do it," Dean finally answered, his forced monotone at odds with his tightly clenched jaw and the fist around his liquor glass. "That's what I'm trying to tell you, Cas. You _can't_ go back up there. The minute they think you have doubts, they'll throw you in some re-education bible camp. They'll torture you – or _worse_ – until you fit the mold again."

A mold that did not have room for Dean Winchester, or any other human.

Castiel tilted her head once more as her human charge's heart picked up, beating faster and harder than their current conversation or conditions warranted. His body language was tense with dread, and he was forcefully fighting back a persistent memory.

"Who is Naomi?"

Dean flinched, for which the angel almost apologized. "Stop reading my head, Cas."

"Then talk to me, Dean."

The hunter swore it had to be the new vessel. Maybe women were just naturally more expressive.

(They were, in fact, not, and it was Angela, awake as Jimmy had rarely been, telling Cas to add a little eyebrow lift to that one. " _No, wait, too much, you don't want to look crazy. Huh? Oh, yeah, raising both of them too much is usually a sign of surprise. But just one- see, see what he's doing there? That's surprise. And maybe a smidge desperate. Don't do that. Maybe we should have practiced with a mirror first…"_ )

"You don't know her?" Dean finally relented, ignorant to the conversation going on within Castiel's new body. "She's an angel."

"I am not familiar with her, but there are many angels. Some I know only by name."

Naomi was, indeed, one of those names, but Castiel had heard nothing more of her. They had not met before, nor had she heard anything pertaining to the other angel's duties.

"She's Heaven's enforcer," Dean bit out, expression dark and dangerous. "She's the one they send angels to when they step out of line. When Zachariah's asshole methods aren't enough." The human rounded fully on her, setting his drink angrily down on the surface of the desk and splashing several drops onto old books and scraps of paper Bobby would surely bitch about later. "She wipes angel's minds, Cas. Resets them. Brainwashes them. She brainwashed you."

Castiel frowned. "That's not possible."

"Oh, trust me." Dean's responding smile was not a smile. His lip pulled back and his teeth gleamed and his eyes were dark. The expression was as deadly as it was bitter, and Castiel grieved for the blatant weight this man bore across his soul. "I'm pretty damn sure it is."

That same memory played over and over in the hunter's mind, like he could not successfully put it to rest. Castiel stared hard at this newly assigned charge, whose body was filled with phantom pain as he saw, again and again, James Novak's vessel standing above him, fists clenched tight, face blank. Castiel knew it was not Jimmy that Dean saw in his memories, but his angelic friend. The 'Cas' Dean was so familiar with.

The angel wondered what could possibly put a human at ease when they'd clearly suffered through a trauma. The soul resting within her borrowed body, her third charge in this brand new world, had many possible answers but none of them sounded like the right one. And Castiel was fairly certain she would only get the one chance with this particular human.

"What did she do?"

Dean spared the angel a side glance, jabbing his finger at the rim of his whiskey glass and contemplating just how badly he did – and didn't – want to finish its contents. He didn't think Cas was reading his mind this time, otherwise she'd have her answer, but he didn't like the question any more knowing it was a genuine one. In fact, it might have made Cas asking it even worse.

"She tried to make you kill me."

Castiel's head tilted to the side and her full hair fell in a curtain of dark waves. Dean focused on that, on the shape and feel and the distraction of it all. The hunter let his mind wander wherever it damn well wanted to go, so long as it stayed out of that crypt and the memory of his best friend beating him to death.

"But I did not?" The angel was fairly certain of the answer, although she was beginning to realize that death was not an uncommon occurrence among the Winchesters. Three years into Bobby's notes, both brothers had faced and conquered it once, and Castiel could tell just from the frayed and thinning edges of Dean's soul that those were hardly the last times.

' _Fuck it_ ,' Dean thought, grabbing the whiskey with a full fist and downing the last of it. "No, for reasons we sure as hell aren't getting into now."

He managed not to slam the glass back down only for the reason that Sam was sleeping a few feet away and Bobby just upstairs. Instead, he let the thing slide across the wood with a satisfying, grated noise and rounded on Cas with his best I-Am-The-Righteous-Man-And-You-Will-Listen-To-Me face. "You _can't_ go back to Heaven, Cas."

Castiel's head tilt only got stronger and it was like poking a needle into an inflated balloon, with the balloon being Dean's ego and optimism all in one. "I must."

"Why? Why can't you just stay here, where you're _safe!_ "

It was a good thing the glass was out of reach, because Dean definitely would have slammed it down were it still in his tightly fisted hands. He needed to slam something. Castiel's eyes were wide again, surprise painted across her features. Dean had tried to make it clear that going back up there would put Cas in danger, but clearly the angel hadn't realized _why_ that might be a bad thing. Stupid, oblivious, martyring idiot.

"I must, Dean," she repeated, though her tone was far softer and there was something in it that suggested she'd just realized the man before her actually _cared_ about her wellbeing. The surprise there might have been painful, if Dean hadn't seen it a dozen times before. She set the notepad down on the desk, next to the empty glass. "If I play as big a role in future events as you suggest, than altering my own timeline will have the same devastating effects."

The hunter clenched his jaw in the face of possibly the only argument he couldn't actually argue against. Not that that had ever stopped Dean Winchester before. "Yeah? How's that timeline gonna do when you go and get yourself thrown in Heaven's prison, huh?"

Castiel didn't deign to respond to his childish anger. Instead she stayed annoying calm and infuriatingly rational. "Having a set of eyes and ears in Heaven can only help our cause. Your knowledge on their actions are limited to only what my future self relayed, which was minimal at best."

" _You_ wanna play _spy_?"

The angel once more disregarded the hunter's attempts to goad her into a fight rather than face the logic of her argument. "There is another reason to return. I do not believe the entirety of the Host has corrupted. Some of my brothers will not stand for this. Perhaps they can be persuaded to turn against our superiors, should the time come that they must make that choice."

That shut Dean right up. Or, at least, it did for the thirty seconds it took his brain to reboot and the earlier panic – lingering in the back of his mind, just waiting for the incentive – to return. That irrational anxiety he'd been feeling ever since Cas declared she was going right back upstairs. A fear that had nowhere to go for a hunter like Dean except to boil over into anger.

"Damn it, Cas, you're going to get yourself killed!"

"I will be…covert," Castiel offered, trying her hand at appeasement and missing by a mile.

"You don't _do_ covert! You can't even fake being an FBI agent!"

That got a slightly annoyed look from her, clueing Dean in that his continued questioning of her capabilities or reasoning would not be tolerated much longer. No matter how much he believed to know about her from another lifetime. Dean gritted his teeth and tried to shove that anger down enough to find some logic of his own, because, damnit, he wasn't wrong here.

"Even if you can get some of the angels on your side, you'll never sway the big guns. And numbers aren't gonna matter against Michael or Raphael, are they? They'll throw all of you in prison and we'll be right back to square one. Worse than square one; we'll be _screwed_."

"The risk does not make it wrong, Dean. You offered me a choice. My brothers deserve the same."

"She's got a point."

Human and angel turned to Sam, still lying on the couch but head turned towards them and eyes open and clear, suggesting he'd been awake and listening for some time. Dean swore under his breath, sending a glare in his brother's direction as he crossed his arms defensively over his chest.

"Foot soldiers can change the tide of a war," the younger Winchester offered, sitting upright. "If Cas can amass support – _discreetly_ – Heaven may have a harder time letting the Apocalypse just happen."

"It could be a suicide mission, Sam."

The brunette glanced at Castiel, who returned a curt nod in his direction. "It's her family, Dean. Her choice."

"He's going to get caught, and we won't be able to do a damn thing about it from down here!"

"I appreciate the concern for my wellbeing," Castiel responded, not unkindly, "but this is not up for discussion. I will not abandon my home. My brothers. Especially if what you say about Zachariah and Naomi is true."

Dean sent Sam a desperate, pleading look and the younger Winchester was still kind of floored to see Dean so worried. He really didn't want Cas going back up there. Part of Sam's incredibly intelligent brain suggested they heed that fear. Dean knew more about all of this and everything that came next than either he or Castiel. It was still the angel's choice, however. Perhaps even the right one, given that keeping her from Heaven might alter the timeline too much anyway.

"She can act as a double agent up there. Our eyes and ears, maybe even some influence. That could be a huge advantage."

His brother threw up his arms, frustration clear on his face but fueled more by concern that bordered on panicked. He knew he was losing this fight. "He can't even lie believably!"

"She."

"Whatever," Dean growled. "Point's still the same. _She's_ total crap at undercover."

"Then we'll teach her." Sam turned to Castiel with a questioning look and the angel, though less sure of this particular topic, gave a nod once more. He turned back to his brother. "If she's made up her mind, we need to arm her the best we can. We'll teach her how to lie."

Dean snorted, dropping his arms and grabbing the whiskey bottle. "Good luck with that."

-o-o-o-

Teaching an angel to lie was like mixing oil and water. At least, teaching _this_ angel to lie, as Dean had mentioned more than once how easily it came to the rest of Castiel's brothers. It certainly did not help that Dean sat in Bobby's chair, feet on the desk, glass in hand, and made snide quips at every turn. It got to the point where Sam grabbed the liquor bottle, put it on the other side of the room, and in no uncertain terms told his brooding brother to help or get out. To which Dean glared deeply and more than a little sullenly, before he eventually started offering pointers.

Castiel really was terrible at deception, just as Dean had said. Her eyes would widen almost comically any time they asked her a question she did not know the answer to and thus was expected to make one up. Then she'd stumble and stutter her way through something jumbled and largely incoherent. It wasn't the basic concept that was giving her trouble. The angel understood the idea behind fabricating a story rather than confessing the truth along with the purpose of it, if not the necessity. She was just total crap at it.

"This is never gonna work," Dean finally growled, annoyance making the words come out low in his throat and Sam winced sympathetically as Castiel both ducked her head and clenched her fists.

"Have some patience, Dean," Sam argued back, feeling a tad defensive on the angel's behalf. It was obvious to him that Castiel was trying. Not just trying to do something completely unnatural to her values and base personality, but trying to follow Dean's every demand when she clearly didn't want to. From agreeing to help them against Heaven's orders to changing her vessel, returning to her home and siblings seemed like the only thing she _wasn't_ willing to compromise, and Sam could respect that. Not to mention, Dean was being an ass.

"Just because lying comes easy to you-" Sam continued, knowing that was a low blow, with Dean flinching almost violently at it, "-doesn't make it easy for her."

His brother blanched, fidgeting as he first sat upright in Bobby's chair, then gave up entirely and got to his feet with the need to move, half from guilt and half in frustration. He didn't want lying to come easy to the angel. He knew the path that led there and it wasn't one he ever wanted Cas to walk again. But, damn it, this was kinda life or death stuff they had to teach hi- _her_ and they had all of one night on no sleep to do it.

Logically, Dean knew what this was that had him so tense and angry. He knew that crawling feeling just under his skin that showed itself as rage and frustration and impatience was actually fear. Fear he wasn't even ashamed to admit (to himself, of course; no way he was saying it aloud) because they were talking about sending Cas into the lion's den. Outnumbered, barely armed, with no rescue option should it all go to hell in a handbasket.

And Dean was just so damn sure it was going to.

He was still trying how to put all of that into words without sounding like he was scared shitless, when Sam straightened on the couch, a sudden in his eye that usually meant he'd had a revelation.

"We're going about this the wrong way." Yup, that was Sam's breakthrough voice, and the hint of a smile on the corner of his lips meant it was probably a good one, too. "We're trying to teach her to lie. We need to teach her how to not answer instead. Without lying."

Dean blinked, then furrowed his brow as he thought through his brother's words and what he was talking about. "You want him to pull a Spock?"

"What's a spock?"

"I was thinking politician – several come to mind – but, yeah, Spock works too," Sam reasoned with a shrug, that smile growing even as he turned to answer the angel's question. "Spock is a character in a well-known science fiction show. He's from an alien race called Vulcans, who don't lie."

"They're all about logic and 'controlling one's emotions,'" Dean continued, raising his hands in air quotes that blue eyes followed with a curious frown. "You'd like 'em, Cas."

"Yes, they do sound more sensible than humans."

Sam snorted something unlady-like over on the couch and Dean narrowed his eyes at the sassy angel.

"Watch it, Bucko. Almost all my friends are human."

"You don't have any friends, Dean," Sam interrupted, that little smug smirk pulling at his face as he took the angel's side _again_. He sent Cas a little conspiratorial grin that she didn't seem to get, and added, "Present company excluded."

"Bitch." Dean pulled quite the bitchface of his own, crossing his arms over his chest, but he couldn't ignore the way his lips tried to stretch into a smile. This was almost _home_. This was almost family. Almost what he'd had and had to leave behind. What he so badly missed and was, admittedly, a good chunk of his motivation in retrieving the angel. "All my friends _will_ be human. Except Benny. And Benny's awesome."

And one hell of a mood-killer, turned out. That damn Cajun vampire who'd been as much a brother to Dean in Purgatory as Sam or even Cas. More so, actually, because he'd stuck by Dean's side and hadn't pulled some dumb suicidal penance of _not leaving_. But Dean shoved all that away and, along with it, the painful thought that he'd probably not meet Benny in this timeline. Not if he successfully changed the future. And didn't that just suck, right alongside every other side effect of time travel. There was just no way he could let anyone, including himself, open Purgatory, no matter what awesome bro-vamps were waiting on the other side for an escape. (And, oh god, he did not just use the word _bro-vamps_.)

"Who's Benny, Jerk?"

Dean shook off Sam's question, a pained look that quickly schooled itself into ' _later',_ which his brother thankfully heeded. They had more important things to discuss right now. After that, Dean was going to sleep for a friggin' week and not think about anything past two thousand and six.

"Right," the man from the future clapped his hands together, leveling Cas with a look that made her decidedly nervous. "Time to teach an angel a thing or two about lying like a Vulcan."

Castiel's brow pinched and she glanced between the two brothers, clear confusion in her eyes. "I thought you said Vulcan's do not lie."

-o-o-o-

It took another three hours, the sun climbing well into the sky by that point. Bobby eventually rejoined them, all puffy-eyed and grumpy-browed, until Sam put a cup of freshly brewed coffee in front of him and he showed his appreciation by silently sipping the life-giving drink as he watched the two idjits Vulcanize an angel.

Castiel was pretty damn close to a natural at evasion, it turned out. Once she got the idea of avoiding an answer with another truth, or a half truth, or returning their question with a question of her own, she'd picked it up with a wicked aptitude that Dean sometimes forgot was buried beneath all that stoicism and pop culture cluelessness. But Cas had always been a brilliant strategist, despite lacking creativity. That had been their problem with lying; Castiel wasn't good at making things up, but she was an expert at employing what she already had.

"Where were you, Castiel?" Sam asked, voice stern and even as he mimicked what he envisioned was an angelic superior.

Given that Cas stood at attention, somehow even more motionless than she'd been previously, Dean figured Sam wasn't that far off. Or Castiel was better at role playing than he'd ever suspected.

 _Mind out of the gutter, Dean. You don't even_ like _roleplay. Except hot nurse outfits. Hot nurse outfits are okay. She'd look amazing in a hot nurse out-_

Dean made a disgruntled noise in the back of his throat and crossed from the kitchen counter to the doorway, desperately needing movement for his suddenly restless energy. Sam watched him pass with a look that said he knew exactly where Dean's head was at and was both disapproving and also entirely prepared to never let him live it down. Dean just glared at him.

"I was on Earth," the angel replied succinctly and confidently, unaware of the silent conversation happening between the brothers.

"What were you doing there?" The older of the two asked, voice staying even despite the fact that he needed a good head cleansing and maybe a quick adjustment to his pants.

(He was _fine_ , damnit.)

This wasn't their first time running through this kind of drill, and Cas was getting good at it. It was almost fun, and Dean had found himself actually enjoying the banter over the last couple hours, forgetting his fear several times (at least until he abruptly remembered it again, always with a lurch deep in his stomach). Previous moment aside, he'd also mostly gotten his body and mind to behave around Angela. Mostly.

"I was speaking with a human."

It was Sam's turn to fire off, "Who?"

Castiel turned her head to meet her second interrogator with a pause. It didn't come across as hesitant as it had in earlier run-throughs, and the boys both took it as improvement. They'd been asking tougher questions with each round, too. "I believe the name he gave me was a joke."

 _'I'm Dean Friggin' Winchester.'_

Dean snorted. That was pushing it, but it wasn't a lie. The line certainly hadn't been completely serious, that's for sure. A little inside joke all for himself and an audience ten years in the future. Scratch what he'd said earlier. The angel _was_ getting creative.

"Nice one, Cas."

"Why were you on Earth?" Sam continued before the angel could get too comfortable with the hunter's praise. Not that it wasn't earned, but they weren't finished yet. Over the last three hours, the brothers had taken turns playing good cop/bad cop, sometimes bad cop/bad cop, as they took turns firing off questions. Sometimes they gave the angel time to think, others were speed rounds. The angel adapted pretty spectacularly, given how new she was to this.

"The human prayed to me for guidance."

"Why did you leave Heaven when you knew it wasn't allowed?" The angel cast a look Dean's way, a little more uncertain this time as she didn't have an immediate response readied. It was a harder question, the hunter knew, because it admitted disobedience. The key would be to downplay just how noncompliant she was considering being. Had considered. Hell, fully committed to at this point, Dean was pretty sure.

"Because," Cas started slowly, turning her upper body to face Dean entirely, shoulders squared. Those blue eyes were as intense as Dean had ever seen them, and he swallowed heavily at the memory of an angel in a barn so many years ago. It came to him instinctually, a super-charged exchange he had never forgotten, and Dean knew what Cas was going to say before she said it, "God commanded it."

Sam's brows went damn near his hairline (and over his shoulder at the kitchen table, Bobby choked on a mouthful of lukewarm coffee.) The room feel silent and he glanced at his brother. "Is that going to work?"

Dean shrugged, clearing his throat past the weird ache there. "It isn't a lie."

Castiel straightened at the approval, turning to Sam. "God once commanded the angels to shepherd humans and be their guide in all things. Even with Heaven's gates shut, his command has not changed."

"It's risky," Dean piped in, a little flicker of worry in his gut telling him not to let Cas's ego get ahead of itself. The angel had never been one to get caught up on pride or arrogance, but it would be a stupid thing to blow her cover on upstairs.

"Indeed." The angel tilted her head conciliatorily, but lost none of that sureness from her eyes. "However, I am confident I can argue my point with success. As you said, it is not a lie, and Zachariah cannot accuse me of disobedience for it alone."

Especially not if others of the Host were present at the time. Castiel was still certain that not all her siblings would abandon humanity – or their Father's initial will – so glibly. She had to believe that some of her brothers would realize God's original commandment still stood.

Sam shrugged, happy with trusting the angel to know more about Heaven then they did. Dean was still frowning lightly, but he couldn't really argue. Zachariah might give her a slap on the wrist, but it was nothing the angel couldn't handle.

"Damn," he finally said, a smile breaking out. "Nicely done, Cas. I'd say you're ready."

As ready as she could be for just one night of practice. That was going to have to be good enough. His smile turned more smirk as he lifted his hand, splitting his fingers down the middle in a Vulcan salute. Across the room, Sam groaned.

"Live long and prosper, young Padawan."

Sam groaned even louder and Castiel's blank face tilted quizzically to the side.

"I do not understand."

Bobby snorted into his mug, Sam just rolled his eyes, and Dean clapped the angel on the shoulder hard enough to jolt her body forward all of a half inch.

"You don't have to, Cas. But when you get back, we're watching Star Trek. I'm educating you properly this time around."

Castiel didn't understand that, either, but the smile on Dean's face and the way his soul flickered happily in response was enough for her to know that she didn't need to.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/Ns:**_ _Mostly chatter this time around, but I particularly like the quiet moment between the two of them while Dean thinks Sam is asleep :)_

 _ **-Approaching Milestone**_ _: So some of you may have noticed that we are rapidly approaching that awe-inspiring 1000 review milestone! I'm ecstatic. I've never written anything that got even halfway there (I've never written anything this long, either). In celebration and as a treat for how awesome you guys are, when we hit that magical 1000_ _th_ _review, you'll get_ _ **back-to-back chapters**_ _that weekend (one on Sat, one on Sunday). I was originally going to keep it as a surprise, hooooowever… Look, I'm not saying Chapter 16 has a nasty cliffhanger, or anything… I'm just saying that if I were you, and I was going to get back-to-back chapters… I'd probably want those chapters to be 16 and 17, as some sort of meager consolation for the mother-of-all-mean-cliffhangers-that-won't-be-resolved-right-away-because-this-story-has-a-no-good-dirty-rotten-author-behind-it._

 _I'm aware it's going to be a challenge, though. Fifty reviews for one chapter is *a lot.* Oh, and this isn't bribery! (Okay, it's not completely bribery). You'll get those back-to-back chapters whenever we cross that milestone, be it next chapter or four chapters from now. I'm just saying…. If it were me…. I'd want Chapter 17 immediately after the not-niceness that is the end of 16._

 _Just saying ;D_

 _ **-Reviews:**_ _Speaking of! Thank you all so much for your continued support and pure awesomeness! I hope you drop a line and let me know how we're doing, especially now that we have a couple chapters of Cas-with-a-feminine-pronoun under our belt. It hasn't been the easiest to write, and I'd love a check-in with how you guys are getting along with it._

 _ **-Up Next**_ _: With Cas's evasion tactic down almost-pat, it's time to head back up to Heaven before the boys upstairs start wondering where their littlest angel has gotten off to. But first, there's a little problem Castiel forgot to mention, and her name is Angela Garrett. Bobby's not gonna be happy, especially when the boys rush off after a surprise phone call from an old friend of the family._


	49. Season 2: Chapter 16

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Reviews:**_ _You did it! You guys blew the 1000_ _th_ _review milestone out of the water. Actually, we can award most of that to VegasGranny and Atlasnix, both of who went back and reviewed every chapter available to bump up that number XD We passed that 1000_ _th_ _milemarker like four hours after the chapter was up, lolz. I'm preeeety sure that's "cheating" but 1. There were no rules, 2. It was a numbers game all along, 3. This wasn't supposed to be bribery, and 4. Who gives a * because we get back-to-back chapters!_

 _Oh, and a huge, amazing, special thanks to everyone who continued to review well after we hit our goal :D You guys are the most awesome of awesomeness._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** It's time to venture back up to Heaven. Armed with the lying capabilities of a Vulcan, there's only one more thing to settle up. What the heck they're gonna do with poor Angela Garrett's braindead body. Bobby's really gotta learn to say no to house guests. Plus, surprise cameos are making phone calls, Azazel's kidnapping language professors, and I'm a no-good-dirty-rotten-author writing cliffhangers with delight._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 16

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean was trying to psyche himself up for sending the angel back upstairs – Castiel having insisted she'd been gone too long already – when she turned to both of them and dropped one last bombshell.

"This body will need to be connected to a life support system while I am gone."

Both Winchesters and Bobby blinked at her.

"Wait, what?" Dean asked, the first one to form words, but probably not the best words.

Castiel merely stared at him. "This vessel was braindead when I approached her. She will return to that state once I have left for Heaven."

Bobby snorted from his spot leaning against his desk. They'd had breakfast at around nine am, once Castiel had been declared ready and the boys were too tired to do much else than shovel down what the older hunter had put in front of them. After that, Cas had started on about the invisible timer ever ticking down, insisting that her absence really would be noticed and cause far more trouble for them than her return would. The humans had moved into the living room, fully expecting Castiel to just blink out once goodbyes were said.

Now Bobby was wondering if the nearest hospital was the next on their list. Long term hospice care, maybe? That was gonna take some paperwork they didn't have, though.

Sam, probably thinking along the same lines, exchanged a look with his brother.

"What the hell, Cas!" Dean fired off, surprise coloring his words more than anger, but with him the two weren't always easy to tell apart. "That lady's letting you roam around in her body; least you could do is friggin' heal her!"

The angel leveled a look his way that so clearly reminded him that they'd just spent the last twelve hours discussing how they should not be making changes to the timeline. It was such a descriptive look, that when Castiel said as much, dryly, Dean already knew what was coming word for word.

Female vessels. Way more emotionally expressive. That was what this was. Absolutely.

"Who's gonna notice one woman waking up from a coma," he groused instead, with an expression that Castiel was quickly identifying as _I-understand-your-logic-but-I-am-going-to-ignore-it-because-I-don't-like-it._ It turned out, upon spending extended time with humans, they made even less sense than she had previously known.

"Very few humans, I imagine," the angel answered, expression unimpressed. "The reaper assigned to her, however, most certainly will."

"Reaper?" Sam asked, color draining somewhat from his face. He glanced at Dean, who looked equally perplexed and cast a quick glance around the seemingly empty room, looking for something he knew they couldn't see.

"Angela Garrett was never intended to wake up." Castiel was back to being an impenetrable and imposing wall of rightness and perseverance, with only a _hint_ of exasperation. "The reaper assigned to her soul will notice if she is suddenly healed and removed from Death's list."

"And the reaper would report it to Heaven," Sam finished easily enough, casting yet another look his brother's way, this one wary. They all knew what level of royally-screwed that meant for them.

"No," Castiel corrected, causing all both humans to look at her with surprise. "Reapers have no obligation to report to Heaven, or any of the afterlives. They report only to Death. However, it is likely that an… inquiry would be made as to why they were not informed of Heaven's intentions to revive Angela Garrett."

"Professional courtesy between departments?" Bobby snorted sarcastically, though he figured he wasn't actually that far off.

Dean let out a laugh that wasn't very mirthful even as Castiel nodded. "Bureaucracy in Heaven. Why am I not surprised?"

"So, the reaper won't say anything if you leave her in a coma?" Sam asked cautiously, working through the information internally and ignoring his family, who were being less than helpful. "Won't he care that she's being used as a vessel?"

"Her fate is unchanged, whether as my vessel or on life support." The angel seemed entirely unremorseful about that fact, and the humans in the room were trying not to take that awfully personally. Well, Sam and Dean were trying. Bobby still wasn't entirely on board with all this. "The natural order remains. Her body will eventually fail, leaving her soul to be reaped. That is all the reaper cares about."

"Damn," Dean said with a facsimile of a smile – too much teeth, too little smile – stretched across his lips. "Death is cold."

Castiel stared at him for a moment, that intensity turning contemplative. "Perhaps. But the destination awaiting her is not. The reaper will abide so long as we do not change that."

The humans exchanged looks, and Dean finally sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair tiredly. "Alright. Looks like we're shopping for life support."

-o-o-o-

Castiel zapped them into a medical equipment warehouse belonging to Avera Health, an hour away in Madison. Their first idea – leaving Angela at a hospital – was nixed by Dean immediately. Without ID and the ability to contact next of kin, the hospital wouldn't keep her on life support long once they declared her officially braindead. Then Cas would be back to the vessel search, something she assured them was unlikely to work out well a second time. Their next idea – robbing a local hospital for the equipment to do home hospice – was nixed by Sam, who decided that life-saving machinery should probably remain where it could save lives. So Bobby's idea, complete with an _idjits_ tacked on at the end, had been one of the supply companies that provided hospitals with those machines in the first place.

The warehouse they arrived in was massive, total _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ huge, filled with crates and boxes upon boxes of plastic-wrapped medical equipment that neither Sam nor Dean had any clue the purpose of, let alone how to use. Dean, having traveled Angel Air more regularly than Sam (who, at this point, had a grand tally of _none_ ), recovered from the jolting trip faster. He was used to the clenched, cramped up feeling of his internal organs rattling around inside the cage that was his body, and the way his muscles buzzed from the abrupt change of standing to moving to standing again, all faster than he could even blink.

Sam, on the other hand, looked like he might throw up, but he was holding it down like a champ.

"Alright," Dean said as his kid brother managed to stand up straight, legs holding up beneath his impressive height. "What do we need?"

Castiel blinked owlishly at both Winchester men when she realized they were looking directly at her and expecting an answer. She glanced around the endless expanse of boxes with a blank expression, then back to Dean. "I am not familiar with the medical equipment needed to keep a human body alive."

He pulled a bitchface worthy of his younger brother and threw his arms up. "Great! What are we supposed to do, play Life Support Bingo?"

Beside him, Sam rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone. "Keep watch," he ordered with some exasperation, already pulling up the necessary medical information for homecare off the internet. As the page loaded, he started strolling through the various machines, looking for their names and any information they would need.

"You heard him." Dean made a shooing motion towards Castiel, which the angel regarded with a severe lack of amusement, but moved towards another aisle nonetheless to watch for any service workers that might stumble upon them. Behind her, Sam muttered something about always having to be the mother, to which Dean called him something less than flattering and Sam answered back with a profanity of his own in a manner that completely contrasted their harsh words. Castiel watched them over her shoulder now and then, completely remiss in her guard duties (though to be honest her senses were hardly limited to sight alone) as she tried to better understand her new charges.

Then Sam started pointing out crates for Castiel to transport back to the Singer household and the angel focused on the task at hand.

-o-o-o-

"This is a pain in the ass," Dean grumbled from his spot against the wall, behind the bed, half crouched, half precariously balanced, trying to plug in the last of the three different machines into the already overloaded sockets of Bobby's spare room that had been converted into a storage of sorts (and then mostly forgotten about). The previous contents of the room – numerous boxes, a broken down bed, and what could probably qualify as a dresser but had long seen better days – were now out in the hall, crowding the narrow corridor. Bobby was going to be positively thrilled, soon as he got back from his supply run and whatever errand he said he needed to run in town (to which he'd grumpily snapped it was none of the boys' business after Dean pestered him for details. Dean turned to his brother once the older hunter left and said "twenty on prostate exam." Sam hit him in the arm and told him to grow up, then mumbled just under his breath, "e-harmony date" and pretended to ignore the grin Dean sent his way.)

The older Winchester finally got the plug into the outlet and straightened with a triumphant noise that was somewhat undercut by a groan as he righted from the awful position. He might be ten years younger, but he was still pushing thirty.

"You are the one who set these conditions," Castiel reminded him from her own duties of removing the last of the heaviest boxes (filled with books, no doubt). They'd have to ask Bobby what he wanted done with them. There'd be some space left in the room once they finished setting all this crap up, but the broken down bed and larger furniture would need a new home. Dean suspected the barn in the back would be it, but some of those boxes didn't have any names written on them. The man from the future suspected what their contents were, given they looked like they hadn't been touched in at least fifteen years, and figured they'd be lucky enough not to piss off Bobby just by moving 'em around, let alone sending them to the barn via Angel Airs.

Dean pulled a face at Cas's back anyway, but the celestial being continued, regardless, "Did you not think there would be consequences to your demands?"

The look Sam sent his way – the smug-as-shit one that said ' _well, that was a long time coming'_ – made Dean narrow his eyes. He was not liking this new dynamic of kid brother and angel tag-teaming him all the damn time. Before he could open his mouth to respond appropriately, they were alerted to Bobby's return by the disgruntled exclamation coming from the hall as the old hunter made it up the stairs to see the mess they'd made of his home.

"What the hell is all this?" His bearded face popped up from the other side of the furniture-and-box blockade, something halfway between enraged and bewildered spread across his face.

"Heya, Bobby," Sam answered with a reassuring (translation: weak) smile. "We figured this was the best room to set Angela up in."

The hunter's eyes bulged, his eyebrows reaching for his cap.

"We can't take her on the road with us." Dean shrugged, gesturing to all the heavy equipment – the ventilator, heart monitor, and IV feeds for nutrients.

"So yer leaving her _here_?" he balked, loudly, and the brothers exchanged glances. Apparently, they had not all been on the same page that morning.

"Uh…" Sam glanced between father figure and brother.

"You're kinda the only permanent home we got," Dean reasoned, and Bobby's eyes narrowed at the obvious attempt on his heartstrings, even as those strings definitely twanged. He growled low in his throat at the warmth blossoming in his chest. Damn manipulative kids.

"What the hell am I supposed to tell people?" he groused instead, refusing to admit or acknowledge that, darn it, he'd caved in all of two seconds flat. Not like fighting a Winchester on anything ever worked out well for anyone who wasn't a Winchester.

"What," Dean pulled his head back and Bobby was gonna start making a bitchface list of his own pretty shortly, "you get a lot of guests up here, do ya, Bobby?"

Blue-green eyes narrowed and Dean was pretty sure that if there hadn't been a pile of boxes separating them, the back of his head would be getting smacked. "I do have a life outside of you boys, ya know."

"Knitting nights and demonic book club?"

Both head's turned to Sam, blinking in surprise. Such sass was usually reserved for Dean. But there was a good-natured smile on his face where he was crouched at the foot of the hospital bed they had totally stolen an hour and a half ago.

"There's a market for crocheted devils traps, didn't you know?" the old hunter growled back, though it looked like Sam, as always, had managed to defuse the situation as only he ever could. "Little old witch-ladies love 'em."

The younger Winchester laughed, standing up as he finished tucking the last sheet corner and locked down the wheels. "Just tell anyone who asks that she's a niece. Home care is cheaper than hospice in a lot of ways."

Bobby's expression was hardly believing. He gestured over the blockade to the room chalk full of expensive looking equipment. "That's _cheap_?"

Over by the bed, shimmying his way out from said machinery, Dean shrugged. "You know a guy."

Bobby heaved a sigh, rubbing the back of his head through his cap and knowing he was already done for.

"I'm getting too old for this," he muttered before leveling his most deadly look at the two boys, who straightened to attention beneath it, and damn their daddy for that. "She croaks and you two are hauling ass back here. I ain't burying her."

From the corner of the room where Castiel was re-stacking some of the unnamed boxes that Dean suspected would stay in the safety and comfort of the home, the angel piped in, "If Angela's body should pass and I am not present to revive her, I believe we will have more pressing concerns than disposing of her remains."

Bobby harrumphed from the hallway, crossing his arms over his chest. "You've clearly never smelled a dead body before."

To which Castiel tilted her head tellingly and Sam quickly changed the conversation to something far less morbid before the angel could respond with unintentional arrogance that might just make Bobby change his mind about being so generous with his guest bedroom.

-o-o-o-

By the time the room was finally set up, Castiel was beginning to show signs of agitation with her continued time on earth, and there was nothing left to do but say their farewells, Dean reasoned. He wasn't happy about it, but didn't see much more use in putting it off any longer. Sam gave the angel an encouraging, though somewhat awkward shoulder pat rather than a hug, which Castiel would not have reciprocated nor entirely understood, he figured. Bobby just nodded with a grunt that probably meant something like 'be safe up there' or 'see you when I see you.' Both were equally likely.

Dean, on the other hand, latched onto that slim wrist as she made to climb onto the hospital bed. Blue eyes turned and locked on his own, and despite everything they'd done in the last twenty four hours to fight it off, fear curled in his gut once more. Dean was a man of action and, admittedly, at least some level of control. This felt like neither of those things.

"Just…be careful up there," he started, clearing his throat when his voice came out a little rougher than he'd intended. "Don't trust anyone."

Castiel only stared at him. "They're my family."

A flare of annoyance rushed through him at that, but Dean fought it back down. He had to remind himself that even after years of abuse from Heaven and those winged dicks, Cas had never stopped thinking of them as family. Never stopped longing for them to be what Sam and Dean were to each other: brothers. That never-ending well of hope was part of what made Cas such a damn good friend. He never gave up on you, no matter what, and Dean knew that it was probably the only reason the angel had stuck with him through all of it. God knew he didn't deserve to be believed in.

"Just…keep your head down," he amended, trying to ignore the curling dread in his stomach. Cas could handle himself. Herself. He just had to trust that. "We may not be your family yet, but you are ours. If you go dark up there, we can't come get you. So, please, just… stay safe."

Castiel stared at him for another moment, those bluest of blue eyes softening ever so slightly as she gave one, curt nod. "I will, Dean."

She finished climbing onto the bed and Sam helped her get settled beneath the light hospital sheets they'd also stolen. He clipped the heart monitor onto the tip of her left index finger, hooked up her IV for fluids, did something Dean refused to watch for nutrients and bi-product (Bobby flat out left the room at that point, muttering about house guests as he went), and then the younger Winchester handed her the ventilation tube.

Both Sam and Dean had to turn away from that part. Thank god the angel could control her gag reflex, sliding the thing down her throat with what sounded like ease, given the complete silence of it all. She settled back on the bed and the two brothers chanced a glance over their shoulders to make sure she was done. Castiel nodded to them and Sam reached over and flipped the machine, which started up with a light hum and began breathing for the angel with quiet, deep vibrations.

The angel closed her eyes and, a moment later, an undercurrent of light lit just beneath the surface of her skin. It traveled up her arms, under the Zepplin t-shirt and up her neck to gather in her face. It pooled around the tube which Sam was taping in place, and beneath her closed eyelids. The younger Winchester took a step back as the light grew to be almost blinding to look at, even in such small amounts as what leaked through.

Then it was gone. Angela fell unnaturally still, the room seemed unnaturally dim, and the ventilator kept right on humming. All quiet on the western front.

Sam checked a couple of the readouts on the machines. "I think we're good…"

He took a cautious step back and both brothers just stared, waiting with half-bated breaths, as Angela Garrett kept right on breathing.

"Yeah, we should be good," Sam repeated with a nod. The two stood in silence for another moment more, watching the woman's chest rise and fall beneath the perfectly folded over hospital sheet. Sam shifted on his feet. "You think this is gonna work?"

Maybe a little too late to ask, but ask he did.

"Cas may be a total nerd angel but…" Dean took in a deep breath, reminding himself that his friend was a badass angel of the Lord. He didn't need protection. "He's quick on his feet, and loyal as hell. If he says he's with us, he's with us."

His voice dropped to a lower volume as he added on, almost to himself, "He can take care of himself until then."

Sam didn't disagree, nor did he think Dean was necessarily lying or fooling himself. Still, he didn't fail to notice the concern in his brother's eyes, despite the bolstered words.

Though it didn't stop him from correcting, " _Her_ , Dean."

"Whatever," his brother grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest defensively, eyes never leaving the rising and falling of that chest. Sam watched for another moment as well before he nodded, mostly to himself. He gave his brother a congratulatory (and encouraging) nudge to the bicep before he headed out of the room. Dean decided he'd watch for just a little while longer.

Just to be sure.

-o-o-o-

Over the next several days Sam had to drag his brother away from the unconscious vessel multiple times. Dean had a terrible habit of checking in on her every fifteen minutes, just to make sure she was still breathing. Sam got it; this was a human being they were suddenly responsible for keeping alive. But he'd read a dozen manuals, half a dozen home-care books, and spent way too many hours researching the subject online all so that he could confidently say they knew what they were doing.

Which he repeatedly told Dean, insisting that Angela would be _fine_ , Castiel would be _fine_ , and that he needed to relax before he drove them all crazy with his anxious fiddling and obsessive checking.

In the meantime, Sam and Bobby dug into ancient languages and lore on sacked civilizations in search of their mystery green-eyed woman. It was on the evening of the second day after Castiel left them that Bobby plopped a book down in front of him, interrupting his own research, which, admittedly, he'd been taking a break from to fiddle with dad's phone. There was a voicemail on it and he was trying to crack the pin code so he could make sure no one needed their help. Now, though, Sam set the device aside to pick up the book and scan through the page Bobby had left open. His posture straightened immediately, mind suddenly alert and more awake than it had been in hours, at the sight of the familiar symbols he'd seen etched onto the tombs from his vision.

"That's it," he said, awe in his voice and eyes as he glanced up at Bobby.

"It's Proto-Canaanite," the old hunter said with a touch of pride but also that classic huff that was Bobby Singer. "It's _old_ , Sam. Not as old as cuneiform, but damn close. This stuff came before the first recognized alphabet. Hell, it's what turned into the first alphabet."

Sam glanced back down at the symbols again, immediately scanning the several paragraphs of information beside the pictures of stone tablets and crumbled bits of ancient architecture. "This is it, Bobby."

The gruff man nodded, like he'd known it would be and still sort of wished it wasn't. "Dates back as far as third millennium BC. Jordan River valley area, bit north of Mesopotamia." He let out a tired sigh and rolled his shoulders. "I'll start looking for sacked cities in the area. See if there's any lore or history out there."

"Ziggurats," Sam muttered suddenly, staring at the page but his mind was far away.

Bobby stilled, brow raised. "What?"

"The Mesopotamians were famous for their raised temples, called Ziggurats," Sam offered in explanation, though Bobby knew what a ziggurat was. Bobby knew everything. "The tomb I was in, it was raised above the city. I thought maybe it was just up on a hill, but there was a manmade ramp leading down, and if it was a ziggurat…"

"I'll start looking for cities with temples," the hunter agreed. "Sumer was more famous for 'em, but Canaanite architecture wasn't far off, much as I can tell."

Sam couldn't help the smile that pulled at his lips as he thought, _'I wanna be like Bobby when I grow up.'_

"You're awesome, Bobby."

The hunter just grunted and took his book back.

-o-o-o-

Dean came down a couple hours later to find Sam caught between a book on Canaanite culture in twelfth century BC and a phone that wasn't his Crackberry (a joke Dean hadn't gotten to use in _so long_ that he was now certainly making up for time lost). He plopped down at the kitchen table across from him and nudged the Sasquatch with his foot.

"What's that?"

Sam glanced up at him with the perfect kid brother face, but answered nonetheless, "Bobby figured out the language I saw in that tomb. It's Proto-Canaanite."

"Fascinating," Dean responded, sounding anything but. "I meant the phone."

"Oh," Sam blinked down at the device, then up at his brother. "It's Dad's. There's a voicemail on it, but I don't know the code, so I figured I'd try and crack it."

Dean sat upright, a little furrow in his brow that Sam was starting to identify as his brother remembering something from another lifetime. Sure enough, the man started nodding a second later, reaching out to take the phone from him.

"That sounds familiar," he said even as he turned the device over in his hands before tossing it back. "It might be Ellen, actually."

Sam perked up at that.

"I can't remember when she called, but a voicemail sounds right." Dean shrugged, getting up to open the fridge for a drink and maybe a snack. It was a bit late for dinner, but Bobby had told them to cook for themselves (which Dean hadn't exactly done) and it wasn't like he was unused to his sleep and food schedules being skewed. Given the washed bowl drying beside the sink, Sam had probably made himself a _salad_ a couple hours ago, the freak, leaving Dean to fend for himself. "Don't know how early on it was before Dad's death, but if she's already left a message, we don't have to wait around anymore."

Liking the prospect of getting back on the road for more than one reason, and the slight excitement at meeting one of the people Dean swore would be like family to them, Sam took the phone back up with renewed vigor. "I'll keep at it, then."

Dean was pulling leftover burger fixings out of the fridge, sending a noise of approval his brother's way, when his own phone started ringing from his pocket. He dug it out with his left hand, balancing dinner in his right, and flipped it open.

"Hello."

"Dean?" The voice wasn't immediately familiar to him. It was male, older, but that could be half a dozen people. "Winchester?"

The hunter set the food down on the counter and switched the phone to his other ear, pressing his shoulder up to go hands free so he could grab and open his beer. "Yeah, who's this?"

"Daniel Elkins." Nine hundred miles away, a grizzled old hunter sitting at a bar in Manning, Colorado glanced over his shoulder as surreptitiously as possible to watch four newcomers settle at a table by the billiards and order a bottle of Jack. "You were right. Those vampires you mentioned? They just walked in."

-o-o-o-

Somewhere between Manning, Colorado and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Dr. Charles Mann was sure he was about to die.

It had started with an older gentleman coming into his office during his free period with a smile that raised the hairs on his arm and straightened his spine like only evil could. Not that Charles had known what evil was or believed in it – he'd thought perhaps the man was a parent or an older student – until his eyes had turned a pale, terrible, unnatural yellow.

Now the professor was being dragged – _mandhandled_ – into a motel room in a location he didn't recognize, but which most assuredly was not on campus, or anywhere near it if the starry night sky or expanse of low lying crop across the road from them was any indication. It had been raining in Princeton, and now there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Not to mention there weren't farmlands anywhere near the school. Unless you counted the West Windsor Fields, and these didn't look like those.

The man, or not-man, shoved Charles bodily into the room, a punishing grip on his elbow just about the only thing that was keeping the professor upright as he stumbled into the dingy space. He had to blink repeatedly against the dim light, as only the blue flicker of a TV screen illuminated the room.

There was an annoyed noise beside and above him, and the professor flinched at the low growl coming from the man holding his elbow. "What did you do to your clothes?"

The professor canted his head up at the thing currently kidnapping him. His eyes went wide as his brain processed the sounds around its current panicking. He recognized the words, but it was a slow, distant thing. Like wading through fog. The man wasn't speaking English. He wasn't speaking any language that anyone had spoken in thousands of years.

And, honestly, as if having one's life work suddenly presented in speaking form wasn't enough, Charles was also completely unsure what he was talking about (Charles was pretty unsure of just about everything right now, considering he was fairly certain he had just been teleported, which _wasn't possible_ ). But the man with the yellow eyes – which were back to their steely grey now and looking quite normal if not for the annoyance in them – wasn't talking to him.

There was a third person in the room; a woman sat on the edge of the further of two mattresses, television remote in hand and eyes glued to the screen. She was wearing jean cutoffs, frayed along the edges and- Oh. Charles noticed the two lengths of material haphazardly left on the carpet by her bare feet. Well, they had apparently been pants not too long ago.

"It was itchy."

Charles stared, eyes as boggled as his mind, as the woman also answered in perfect Proto-Canaanite. Well, he could only assume it was perfect. He'd never heard it spoken aloud outside of a handful of colleagues, and they all disagreed on a lot of the _how._ Yet, these two spoke it without hesitation or question. Charles was a professor of language. He had multiple PhD's in several different fields, both modern and ancient. He was an _expert_. Which meant he knew what someone speaking a native tongue sounded like. And my God, both of these crazy people was speaking a six thousand year old language like a _native._

Maybe he was the one who'd finally gone crazy.

He glanced between her and the man gripping his arm. His kidnapper growled a second time, once again causing the professor to flinch, but his attention and ire was solely on the woman. "Yes, because they're _jeans_ and your wardrobe palate goes about as far as dried animal hide."

The girl just shrugged a shoulder, either uncaring or unaffected by the clear insult in those words, even if the professor was not currently operating at a mental level high enough to comprehend what was being insulted. Tangles of black hair moved up and down with the gesture, but her eyes stayed on the TV and Charles was oddly reminded of a teenager purposefully ignoring and angering her father. Of course, she was too old to be the man's daughter, or at least Charles thought she was (she looked to be about the age of his students), and besides, the two looked nothing alike.

He glanced between them again, something like hysteria building up in him as his rational brain tried to be reasonable and utterly failed. He'd been kidnapped and _teleported_ into a family feud? This had to be a dream. A terrible, awful dream that he would very much like to wake up from now.

"They were tight," the woman complained again, clicking a button on the remote. The TV switched channels.

"That's because they were _skinny_ jeans," Yellow Eyes offered with a grin that was anything but friendly.

Definitely a dream. Most certainly. Perhaps he'd accidentally ingested something bad with his dinner that evening. Or been slipped some of those drugs the kids did these days. Something about bath salts, was it?

Charles was getting an even worse feeling than he'd had when this man grabbed him in his office and whisked him away to… um… a motel room. Somewhere. Somewhere that was not Princeton. God, it was like a terrible joke, if it wasn't a dream. He was really starting to dread the punchline, still quite sure he was about to die.

"I brought you a present, Princess," his captor continued instead, forced cheer in his voice as he dropped the case of her ruined pants. Not that Charles' brain could wrap his head around how that, of all things, was really a concern here. He didn't get to think on it further, either, which may have been a godsend except that the man holding his arm started shaking him through the grip. Charles winced as his elbow and shoulder joint both protested; he wasn't exactly young anymore.

"I told you not to call me that, demon." The woman turned his way, and Charles found it ridiculously hard to breath for the second time that night staring into a stranger's eyes. Hers were _glowing_. They weren't yellow, like her counterpart's (and Charles was _not_ thinking about what she had called him. He wasn't. It was just a nickname. Like profanity. Yes. Just like that). Instead, hers were a deep and mesmerizing green. Like emeralds, or an ancient forest, or something poetic and mystical that Charles' brain simply couldn't fathom right then and there. The professor couldn't have looked away if he wanted to. Terrifyingly enough, he wasn't sure he did.

She stared at him for a moment, brow pinching in what he could only assume was confusion. Then she blinked and her eyes stopped glowing and Charles stopped reciting Shakespeare in his head with dazed relief. The woman stood from the bed, aiming the remote towards the television once more and shutting it off.

The abrupt silence in the room was overwhelming, and Charles immediately remembered he had every reason to be terrified. While the silence stretched, the professor gaping as his brain rebooted, the woman turned an annoyed gaze to the demon. "Is he a mute present, then?"

Charles, certain the conversation was about him but having a terrible time processing it all the same, managed to blurt out, in an awed and terribly shaky voice, "You're speaking Proto-Canaanite."

The woman's head tilted and the man gripping his elbow hard enough to bruise rolled his eyes so obviously that his head went with him. Then Charles was being shaken once more.

"Wrong tongue, Professor. Try again, and get it right this time, or you won't have one left after tonight," the yellow-eyed man bit out and Charles found himself shaking all on his own now, quite suddenly sure this thing, whatever he was, would follow through on that threat if he continued to do things incorrectly. Not that the professor knew what was correct here.

"H-Hello," he stuttered out weakly, this time making sure to speak the same language as them. He probably should have figured out she didn't know English, based on the fact that the two occupants of the room were speaking a language that had been dead several millennia.

"Hello," she responded evenly.

"Congratulations, now you know why you're here!" his kidnapper announced with another fake smile. He shoved his captive forward and Charles stumbled, catching himself on the edge of the first bed. The woman didn't move. "You have a week to teach her English, Doc."

Charles barely had time to turn around before the motel door was slammed shut and he was suddenly left, alone and confused and terrified, with a woman with glowing green eyes who spoke a language she couldn't possible know how to speak.

But then again, teleportation wasn't a thing, either, and Charles was fairly certain that had happened only a few short minutes ago.

He turned back, slowly – oh, so slowly and he would never make fun of those terrible actors and actresses in those awful horror flicks ever again – to face the woman. She hadn't moved, just remained standing beside the second bed with narrowed eyes and thinned lips that looked so terrifyingly like disapproval that Charles couldn't really move.

He swallowed nervously, looking around the room for lack of any other sensible thing to do. There were books everywhere, the professor noted with some surprise. His mind greedily latched onto the distraction, and he crossed to the little kitchenette table the largest stack was He ran over the titles in his mind, picking up the top book, a thick paperback with a white cover and large red words across the front that lay over a picture of a decaying temple.

"Ancient Greek?" he said aloud without realizing he had. A curious sound – the soft jangle of thin metal – and movement from his peripheral immediately drew Charles' attention. He looked up, wary of the woman now walking towards him. The professor fell back a step, drawing the book to his chest as though that would somehow protect him. Or maybe he was protecting the book, he thought with an edge of hysteria.

She drew up short as that weird metal jingle sounded again (almost like those ridiculously tiny wind chimes that were terribly annoying and high pitch, especially when one was grading papers on an otherwise calm and quiet evening on one's front porch with a bottle of particularly delectable Malbec). Something hooked her lower right leg and halted her a foot and a half from where he stood, almost pressed back up to the wall now. The woman cast an annoyed look down at her ankle, and Charles couldn't help himself. He followed her gaze down to a thin, gold chain looped around her ankle. It ran the width of the closest bed and disappeared around the corner of the mattress, presumably attached to the nightstand, though Charles couldn't see that far. It was a delicate looking thing, like a fine necklace, only it was glowing unnaturally. Given the line of irritated red around her skin there, Charles imagined the chain was not nearly as fragile as it looked.

She huffed something Charles didn't hear properly, but he imagined it wasn't very nice. When the woman raised her eyes to his again, the annoyance remained but he was surprised to see it didn't appear to be with him. She righted herself and held her hand out, obviously for the book he was clutching to his chest.

Charles glanced down at it, then her, then the book again before his brain signals finally got through the miasma of panic and, in no uncertain terms, told him to hand it over and hand it over _now_. She accepted the book and dropped her gaze to its cover. Her hand traced down the cover, following the English letters. Charles noticed her nails were badly chipped and caked with dirt.

"I also speak Greek, if that would be easier for you," she said, now in perfectly enunciated Ancient Greek. Charles knew what that language sounded like; having the modernized descendant still around meant deciphering its secrets was infinitely easier than something like Canaanite or Sumerian. Charles' mind was back to its rebooting stage. She was speaking multiple dead languages with perfect ease, and those two had been centuries – and thousands of miles – apart.

She handed the tomb back to him, and he could only accept it with an owlish stare. "I suppose it would be Old Greek, now."

"Ancient," Charles muttered back without thinking, though at least this time he managed to do it in the right language. At her quirked brow – and there was definitely judgement there that made his legs shake – he managed a strained, "We call it Ancient, not Old."

She canted her head for a moment in thought, before nodding in what Charles assumed was acceptance, and then went right back to staring and waiting.

Brain still stuttering, Charles gripped the paperback loosely back to his chest and glanced around the room covered in books. There were others on language – Ancient Egyptian and a _Dummy's Guide_ to English – along with several World and North American history books, and a few culture and modern technology guides. One of which was carelessly half open atop an upside down MacBook that clearly hadn't been used by this woman.

He looked down at the book on Ancient Greek in his hands, barely even seeing its cover, before he met the woman's eyes once more. Although his brain was having great difficulty connecting even the most simplest of dots, he managed a stuttered, disbelieving, "Who- Who _are_ you?"

-o-o-o-

Many thousands of units of unknown measurement above Manning, Colorado, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the dingy motel room somewhere in between, Castiel was back in Heaven, where time moved very differently.

The angel had spent a long while in silent contemplation, sitting through several of Arthur Staten's cycling memories. None of Castiel's siblings or superiors had noticed his initial absence from Heaven – at least not as anything suspect. Several of his brothers asked where he had been, but it was mild interest and not suspicion that colored their tones. Cas easily evaded their curiosity with what he had learned from the Winchester's teachings.

After much time in deep thought, both in the paradises of his Father's creations and while performing his heavenly duties, Castiel finally settled on the first angel he would approach in his side mission: reaching out to those in the Host who might risk disobedience against their superiors in order to do what was right. As per Dean's request, Castiel would only do so under the most covert of approaches. While he had his own doubts about Dean's distrust of all his siblings, the angel would still heed his warning and his request to remain safe.

Which was why Castiel decided to start with his oldest compatriot and an angel he knew and trusted more than any other still in his garrison.

"Uriel," Castiel greeted, grace swirling across his features as he approached his far more stalwart brother. "There's something I'd like to discuss with you."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/Ns:**_ _Say it with me: no good, dirty, rotten, author ;P (Come on, you all love me and you know it!)_

 _ **-Seriously? You left us with**_ **THAT?** _Hell yes, I did, cuz I'm a_ jerk. _Uriel's on scene, Cas is already getting into trouble, and Daniel-friggin-Elkins is back! You mighta thought we were done with Season 1 because of that whole…you know…labeling every chapter 'Season 2' bit… but nope, we're 16 chapters into Season Friggin' Two and we haven't even finished the events of Season 1 yet. Oi vey. My estimated 30-chapter-per-season-count is nooooot holding up with this one, guys._

 _ **-Cas in Heaven**_ _: I debated for a bit about whether to keep the female pronouns while Cas was up in Heaven but ultimately decided not to. Most of us think of him as a man, so if he's not currently in his female vessel, he would revert back to being a man. I know that's not how it actually works, but it's how us gender-binary fellows tend to think, I figure ;)_

 _ **-Up Next**_ _: The boys are gonna rescue Daniel Elkins from a nest of vampires without that gun Dean might have borrowed with the promise he'd be bringing it back for just such a situation. What could possibly go wrong?_

 _Next chapter will be up tomorrow! CONGRATS!_


	50. Season 2: Chapter 17

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns:** Happy back-to-back Sunday! __I'm actually really excited for this chapter. It's a fun one :)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** So I'm a terrible, no good, dirty rotten author who's *not* going to give you a conclusion to that cliffhanger, just like I *didn't* give you a conclusion to that missing bunker key. Well..._yet _. But in the meantime, I give you other goodies! Namely a vampire nest, an overly confident Dean Winchester, and underly confident Daniel Elkins, a missing Magical Kill-Anything Gun, and our favorite King of the Crossroads battling ants, spiders, and jellyfish! (it'll make more sense by the time you get to it...)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 17

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Elkins?" Dean straightened in the kitchen, surprise crossing his face and voice enough for Sam to stop fiddling with the phone in his hands and look over with a questioning expression. Dean acknowledged the look but didn't respond.

"Yeah, you idiot," the older voice echoed down the line and Dean wondered if old age just turned all hunters grumpy of it was the presence of the vampires Dean had told him six months ago would kill him. "Now tell me what to do."

"They're there?" Dean gestured with his hand for Sam to find a map, crossing the kitchen to the table.

"That's what I said. They just walked in."

Sam checked the various papers on the table for all of five seconds before he grabbed his laptop from the corner and pushed it open. He pulled up Google Maps, a stretch of the United States spread across the screen, and turned towards his brother.

"Where are you?" Dean asked, even as he mouthed _'Manning, Colorado'_ to Sam, who quickly pulled up the area.

"I'm in a bar in town. I don't think they spotted me yet," the man said, though the tone in his voice suggested he was less than sure of that.

"Yeah," Dean muttered, thinking back to the bloodbath they'd once walked into at the man's cabin, "they spotted you."

"Great," Daniel grumbled, voice terse. "You gonna tell me some good news sometime soon? Like how you're gonna get me out of this?"

"How many are there?" Dean gestured for Sam to zoom out and away from the town. Picking up on what his brother was looking for, the brunette quickly typed in Bobby's address and let the directions do the rest for them.

"Four of 'em." He could hear fabric shift and the creak of a bar stool come over the line: Daniel probably looking over his shoulder for where the vampires were.

"Alright." Dean ran a hand down his mouth, licking his lips as he stared at the screen. He'd told Daniel the day he talked the Colt off his hands that this would happen. Told him to call when it did and that he'd be there to sort it out. Stupidly, he hadn't actually come up with a plan for when that day inevitably came. "What would be your first move if you hadn't called me?"

Down the line, the old man grunted like he found something funny about that. "Try and make it home. I'm not armed for vamps; machete isn't exactly inconspicuous."

"Yeah, I hear ya." Dean pointed to a spot just past midpoint on the map between the two destinations. Sam zoomed in, did some quick computing and clicking, and then nodded a positive back. "Okay, well, they got you at your cabin last time. They probably followed you from the bar, so you should be able to make it to your truck."

"Yeah?" Daniel sounded less than sure. But at least he wasn't arguing. "Then what?"

"Drive. Don't go home, don't stop, just floor it."

There was a snort down the line, followed by incredulous silence as he waited for more and eventually realized it wasn't coming. "That's it? That's your big plan? What the hell's to stop them from following me?"

"How much gas you got?" Dean was already moving. He shoved the food back into the fridge (no reason to leave Bobby with even more of a mess than the unconscious woman upstairs). Sam closed his laptop, sliding it and several of the books he'd been reading into his bag.

"'Bout three-quarter tank," the hunter said and Dean could hear the jingle of keys in the background. "It ain't gonna last forever, though."

The sasquatch headed for the stairs, bag in hand, with a nod to his brother that said he'd get what they needed. Bobby came in just as Sam bolted up the stairs, eyebrows raised and Dean gestured that there wasn't time to talk but he and Sam were obviously taking off for an urgent hunt.

"Doesn't have to," Dean answered Elkins as he grabbed his jacket from the den and threw it on, then snatched up Sam's go-bag. He headed out the front door for his Baby. Lucky for them it was summer and the days were growing longer, which meant more sunlight and less vamp activity. "That's enough to get you to sunrise. Just head east. They'll follow you until they realize you're not stopping. Trust me, they won't leave their nest, and even if they do, they'll have to stop before the sun comes up."

Daniel grumbled something down the line but it sounded close enough to an annoyed _'fine'_ (and was accompanied by the sound of a door opening and wind and the outdoors) that Dean knew he was already headed for his truck. Sam came out of the house and down the steps, throwing both their bags and a duffle full of weapons and supplies into the trunk Dean had left open. He shouted an apology back to Bobby, along with the sort of facial expression that said he didn't know what was up either but they'd call, and then he climbed into the car alongside his brother.

"We're in South Dakota now," Dean was saying into the phone, shutting his door and starting up the familiar rumble of Baby's engine. "Sam and I'll meet you in Julesburg, the Nebraska side. Call us when you lose 'em."

"Yeah, yeah," Daniel muttered, though his tone had a modicum of appreciation, if not still incredulity. The sound of his own engine turning over rumbled through the line, as did the sound of a gear shift and the hunter flooring it out of the dirt parking lot. "Just bring my gun."

Dean pulled away from the salvage yard, dropping the phone from his ear and flipping it shut, call already ended from the other end. Sam was looking at him expectantly as they pulled out onto the main road. "That was Daniel Elkins. He needs our help."

-o-o-o-

"Vampires?"

Dean looked over at his brother's incredulous tone and spared him a weird look in return.

"Yeah, vampires."

" _Vampires_?" Sam's eyes were wide, staring at him like he was crazy. "You're kidding, right? They don't… Dean, they don't exist."

"What?" Dean's knee-jerk reaction was quickly offset by an internal ' _oh, shit_.' That's right, Dean realized with a jolt. They hadn't known vampires existed before Elkins. Dad never told them, because he'd honestly thought Daniel and others had killed them all.

"Uh, yeah, shit, sorry, I- they- yeah, they're real. Real sons of bitches. Dad thought they were extinct. Wiped out by hunters like Elkins." Dean almost laughed at that now, knowing how many friggin' vampires they would run into in the ten years to come. Not to mention the Alpha.

Yeah, _extinct_ had been off by about a mile and then another hundred.

"Skip the garlic and the crosses. Most of the legends are total crap," he added with a half smirk in Sam's direction, who was still staring at him incredulously, a multitude of questions building in his eyes. "I think we have machetes in the trunk."

Dean practically cackled as his brother's eyes doubled in size and he stumbled out a disbelieving, "Machetes?!"

Man, how the hell had they ever made it to the end of the world the first time around?

-o-o-o-

"So this is really the guy you got the Colt from?"

It was hours later, the boys having crossed into Nebraska some time ago, with only a hundred and twenty miles left to the Colorado border. Elkins had called about twenty minutes earlier to report that the vamps had finally given up tailing him. He was gonna keep going for another thirty minutes or so to be sure, then hit up a gas station. By that point, he'd be riding on fumes. Then, with any luck, he'd cross over to I-76 with a full tank of gas and no surprises, and eventually meet up with the Winchesters just north of the state line.

Dean had given Sam the complete low-down on vamps, from their second set of teeth to the necessary decapitation to get the job done. Even told him a logging saw or barbed wire could do in a pinch, and the face his brother pulled at those little details served as a reminder to Dean that ten years was a long time, and this wasn't his apocalypse-grizzled brother he was talking to.

"Yeah," Dean answered his brother's question concerning the Colt. He stifled a yawn. He probably should have let Sam share some of the drive (he hadn't been sleeping great the past couple nights since Cas left) but it might as well be too late now. They were pretty much there already (they really weren't, they still had at least another hour and a half to go, but Dean was stubborn). "I told you that."

Sam made a noise and Dean glanced over with an expectant expression. The younger Winchester shifted awkwardly. "Honestly…I thought you were lying." As his brother's face shifted, clearly taking offense, the younger Winchester shrugged. "What? You showed up with a magical kill-anything gun and expected me to believe you got it from some hunting buddy of Dad's? I thought Cas gave it to you."

Actually, Sam had thought he'd made a deal for it back when he believed Cas was a demon. He hadn't had much time afterward to think about where it might have come from once he'd learned Cas was an angel. Even less when he learned Cas was an angel who had never met his brother before because Dean came from the future.

"Okay, first of all, I do still do stuff on my own, you know. I'm _capable_. I don't need Cas for everything." Beside him, Sam managed to bite his tongue and not hit that perfectly teed up opportunity. "Oh, and for the record, this is how we got the gun the first time."

Dean's face was smug, a total _told ya so_ that didn't exactly fit the situation, but Sam was wise. Sam didn't bother arguing. He just let that look slide right off his brother's face all on its own, turning into a grimace. "Well, mostly. Elkins was already vamp food by that point."

"So you told him you were from the future and vampires were coming after him." If Sam's tone was anything to go by, his brother was still thinking he stole the gun from Elkins. "And he believed you."

Dean shot him a pissy look that was somehow still proud _and_ charming. "I can be very persuasive when I want to be."

"Uh-huh."

"Shaddup. He gave it to me, didn't he?" Dean refocused on the road and Sam went quiet for another half mile.

"How's he going to feel about you losing it?"

Dean pulled another face, clearing his throat rather than answering the question. He sent his brother a side-long grimace that had Sam once more saying, "Uh-huh."

-o-o-o-

The sun was just barely climbing over the horizon, jagged mountain peaks silhouetted far off in the distance, when they pulled into a Biggerson's parking lot – empty this time of the morning – right along state lines. Daniel Elkins was already there, leaning against his old beat up truck, watching their approach. He pushed off the back gate as the Winchesters climbed out of the Impala, crossing the distance between their vehicles to greet them. Elkins stretched out his arm and shook Dean's hand as Sam rounded the car.

"Any problems?" Dean asked with a grin. Daniel returned the smile with one of his own.

"They followed me for a couple hours. Turned around just before Denver." The hunter greeted Sam with a nod, holding out his hand which the younger Winchester shook. Daniel jerked his head towards Dean. "So, he tell you he's from the future?"

Sam chuckled lightly. "Yeah."

"And you believed him too, huh?" Daniel glanced between the two brothers, the younger of which gave a goofy shrug. "Well, shit. I was hoping it had been a senile moment or something."

Sam laughed again, even as Elkins addressed Dean, asking what the plan was.

"We're heading right back to Manning." The quick response baffled Daniel momentarily, and he glanced to Sam who didn't bother adding his two cents. Dean knew what he was doing and they'd already discussed it on the way over.

"Just the three of us?"

"We'll be fine," the older Winchester waved off the Elkins' concern. "The nest only had five, six vampires, tops."

If he was remembering correctly. Which he was pretty sure he was. Yeah.

"Right," Daniel sounded less than confident as he dragged the word out, following it up with a noise in the back of his throat as he held out his hand. Seven super-powered monsters versus three humans didn't exactly sound like odds he'd gamble on. "Well I think I'll have that gun back, kid."

Sam looked expectantly at his brother, who cleared his throat awkwardly and ducked his head.

"Yeah, about that…"

Daniel's expression flipped rapidly between shock, outrage, and then flat out vexation. "Like father like son, huh?"

"Hey," Dean argued, but even his usual hard ass, I'm-right-you're-wrong-and-screw-you-while-I'm-at-it demeanor was coming out pretty weak here. "I came, didn't I?"

"Without my gun," Daniel emphasized, though it was clear he was still grateful for the partial save. He'd be less grateful going into a nest of vampires without a magic gun capable of, oh, _killing vampires_. He was pretty damn sure the deal had been to give Dean Winchester the Colt and Dean Winchester would come back, with the Colt, when vampires showed up to apparently kill him.

"We gave it to our dad," Dean growled out, starting to get a little defensive in front of the hunter who had never been willing to give it to John in the first place.

Beside him, Sam chanced a glance his way at the blatant omission concerning just where John was now, but he didn't bring it up.

Dean made a noise in the back of his throat and slapped on a cocky grin. "Besides, we don't need the Colt. We're three damn good hunters! We can take on a vamp nest easy."

-o-o-o-

Dean strained against the ropes wrapped around his torso, keeping him pinned to the old wooden support beam that looked about as ready to come tumbling down as the rest of the vampires' chosen hangout. Not that it was giving under any amount of pressure from the hunter.

"You know what would have been real handy to have right about now?"

Dean ignored the question, grunting as he pulled with everything he had one more time against the ropes. Finally, he sagged in defeat with an annoyed huff and glanced over at his fellow captive.

Elkins was strung up just as tightly, though his wrists had been tied together and hauled above his head to hang off an old hook driven into his support pillar. Daniel wasn't fighting against the ropes, letting Dean do all the useless struggling on his behalf. Which was fair, given the fresh bite still shining wet and lazily dribbling blood down his neck to soak his shirt. It wasn't fatal and luckily the vamps hadn't fed forced him to drink, but Dean knew it had to hurt like a bitch. Plus, the blood loss sure wasn't going to help things from here on out.

"Don't say it," the man from the future groaned.

"A magical gun that can kill vampires."

"I'm starting to see why my dad and you got along so well." Dean looked around the nest, the vampires all having conked out for a day of rest after finishing off one of their victims – a young woman now hanging limp, nothing more than a corpse – before finishing off with Daniel as dessert. There wasn't anything he could see within reach to cut the ropes. Dean had a pen knife tucked away in the ankle of his boot – dumb vamps had been too arrogant to search him properly – but getting to it would require an act of contortionism he wasn't looking forward to.

"Yeah, John," Elkins huffed beside him, voice a little rough but he otherwise seemed to be holding up pretty well. "He's a stubborn son of a gun. Good hunter though."

Dean just grunted and started trying to slide his leg up the pillar while the rest of him was serving center stage to a one-man bondage show. Damn vamps must have had a rope fetish of something. There was literally no reason to tie someone up with _this much_ fucking rope.

"Don't suppose he could drop in on this party any time soon?"

Dean stilled at Elkins' hopeful, if not dry, question. A flash of pain and grief – and that endless pit of guilt he would never be free of – spiked through his chest. It stole the words from his mouth and his brain, and it took several long moments to find them again.

"John's dead," he finally managed, instantly annoyed with how it came out. All soft and quiet and mourning.

"…Shit." Elkins was silent as he processed the kid's words, staring at the Winchester boy. He'd never met Sam or Dean before, but there had been real pride in John's eyes anytime he talked about them. Of course, they'd just been kids at the time, but Daniel doubted that pride had gone away with age. "Guess that yellow-eyed son of a bitch finally got him. I was really rooting on him putting one between the bastard's eyes."

Dean was quiet, though he'd resumed his attempts to get to his ankle knife. "Yeah. Me too."

"Damn," Daniel swore again, resting his head back against the pillar and staring up at the dilapidated ceiling. "I'm sorry, kid."

Beside him, the young man nodded but said nothing more. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the snores of the vampires scattered throughout the barn and the shuffling and muttering of the hunter as he tried to contort his body into a position that allowed him access to his boot. It wasn't going all that well, to be honest.

"So, when you say you gave John the Colt…"

Dean winced and finally giving up and dropping his leg back to the ground. He spared Daniel a look that told him everything he needed to know.

"Now a demon has the magic gun that can kill anything?"

The hunter growled low in his throat, but didn't deny it. He didn't bother trying to get to the knife again, either. "We get it back."

"Yeah?" Daniel rolled his neck, immediately regretting the motion as the bite mark flared and he flinched. "Don't mind my skepticism. I'm just not feeling a lot of faith in your future knowledge at the moment."

Dean thunked his head against the pillar, and then closed his eyes and did it again just for good measure. Daniel let him have it and when he was done, the man from the future picked his head up off the wood and leveled Elkins with a look that dared him to say anything otherwise.

"Azazel uses it to open a Hell Gate a year from now. We get it back and I shoot him in the face with it."

Daniel stared at the kid for a prolonged moment before he pursed his lips together and nodded. Just like six months ago, he believed him.

"Good to know."

Silence fell between them again, the boy fidgeting in his ropes again. He didn't really seem to be the type of person good with standing still.

"And it doesn't work on everything," he added, irritation in his voice that had everything to do with the vampire nest they were currently strung up in, the bite on Daniel's neck, and the ropes around his torso. "It won't kill the devil. Learned that the hard way."

"The…what now?"

-o-o-o-

Sam burst into the vampires lair – literally, _burst_ into the barn, using the Impala as a battering ram (and oh, Dean was gonna have words with his brother if he so much as scratched her paint job. They'd _just_ finished putting her back together, damnit!) – before Dean had to explain all that much about that devil comment. Not that Elkins looked all that eager to know. He'd kind of taken Dean being from the future with a slanted look, a shrug, and a grain of salt. Not becoming vampire takeout was about as far as his interest in the known future went.

"You're late," Dean groused as Sam managed to decapitate a charging vampire. He got halfway through his brother's bonds with a bowie knife before another monster hauled him back. At least Sam managed to bury the blade into the wooden beam just before he was yanked away. Dean finished slicing the ropes himself off the embedded knife, yanking it out of the wood with his now free hands and jabbing it into the throat of an approaching vamp. It wouldn't kill him, but it sure did make him howl and back off, clutching at his neck.

"You're welcome," Sam huffed at him, swinging his machete hard as he could and sending another head rolling. Dean cut Elkins free just as Sam tossed a second short sword their way. Daniel caught it before Dean could and promptly annihilated two vampires without breaking a sweat.

Man might be old, but he certainly hadn't lost his edge.

Sam tossed Dean his own blood-soaked blade so the older Winchester could finish off the vampire still gurgling past his shredded windpipe. The last body hit the ground with brutal efficiency and Dean turned to the others, surveying a job well done.

"What took you so long?" The older of the two snarked, though there was no heat in it as he handed his brother the dripping machete back, handle first.

Sam had to sweep blood-matted bangs out of his face with a grimace that he turned into a bitchface (#7). "I stopped to check my e-mail first. I'm not the one who got himself a star role in _'Twilight: an abandoned barn production.'_ "

"If you ladies are finished?" The brothers stopped making faces at each other long enough to turn to Daniel, who was watching them with exasperation and a hand clamped around his neck. "I'd like to get the hell out of here sometime today."

He held his borrowed machete out to Sam, who took it and moved around the chaos and debris to the Impala's trunk. Dean used the opportunity to make a round around his lady, grumbling the entire time about abusive brothers. Sam just rolled his eyes, stowed the weapons, grabbed a med kit to toss to Daniel, and closed the trunk a little harder than necessary.

-o-o-o-

A few hours later, patched up, showered, and in a fresh change of clothes, the boys were once more in parking lot. A more populated one, now, given it was late evening and the world was still out and about. Daniel offered his hand once more, shaking each of the Winchester's in turn, thanking them for the help and, well, probably saving his life.

"I owe you one," he started with a head cant that he pointedly aimed Dean's direction, "or I would, if you hadn't lost my gun."

Dean just rolled his eyes. Daniel was mostly talk, anyhow, but he'd once been good as family to John Winchester, and that made him family to the boys too.

"Hey," the older Winchester called, not able to help himself. He nodded in Daniel's direction as he asked, "Why didn't you give dad the Colt all those years ago?"

Elkins lifted an eyebrow towards the kid. "You mean other than the fact I'd never get it back?"

Sam snorted, an understanding look in his eye. But Elkin's dropped his gaze after the potshot, a wry and bitter grin stretching tight across his lips as he thought over the question he'd asked himself a hundred times over the years.

"A lot of us get into this life through revenge. Most of us, I reckon. But we get to take that anger out on the same things that got us into this. Vamps, werewolves, ghosts. It might not be the one that killed something in us, but it feels close enough most days."

Yeah. Yeah, Dean could understand that. He still felt like that with every demon he sank Ruby's knife into.

"Problem with your father was, he didn't care about those other hunts. Oh, he got 'em done, alright. He saved more people than I could ever count, but it wasn't doing a thing for what drove him." Daniel sighed. "I never thought he'd find it; we didn't even know what that yellow-eyed bastard was. I thought… Heck, I don't know. Maybe if killing it was out of reach, he'd give up. Take you boys and live a normal life."

Silence filled the parking lot between them, the sounds of the world fading away, if only for a moment. Sam glanced at Dean, that hurt furl in his brow and his puppy dog eyes on full. Both Winchester boys understood, they really did. And they, too, knew just how futile a thought it had been, on any of their parts.

"Guess I was hoping to save him," Elkins finished with a bitter snort.

Sam let the silence linger – a moment of mourning – before he offered a good-natured smile. "You need anything, call us."

"Same," Daniel countered, though he glanced at Dean for a moment and the man from the future could tell he was thinking about taking that back, what with that devil comment and all. He didn't, though, and Dean just nodded, understanding completely.

He didn't doubt this would be the last time they saw each other.

"Keep an eye out and be careful, old man. The leader of that nest was old, he could have friends."

Daniel huffed, muttering something about whippersnappers under his breath, but he gave the kid a solid pat on the shoulder and thanked the boys again before climbing into his truck. The Winchesters watched him drive off before sliding into the Impala and pulling onto the road home as well.

-o-o-o-

Sam was fiddling with their dad's phone again on the drive back when Dean drummed his fingers along the steering wheel and announced, "I've been thinking."

"Don't hurt yourself," Sam parried immediately, earning a glare. He didn't bother looking up from the phone, entering another failed passcode. He was close, but he was tired and didn't feel up to hooking his computer up to the device for a more thorough attempt.

"Har har, you're a comedian." His brother rolled his eyes and refocused on the road. "If we're going to have eyes and ears in Heaven, we should get eyes and ears in Hell, too."

Sam blinked, not having expected that as the conversation of choice. Yeah, more than half the topics he thought were going to come up involved Cas, but not in an intellectual capacity. He'd been waiting for the emotional one, the breakdown where Dean finally couldn't hide the jitters or nerves anymore and had to fess up that, yeah, he was _feeling_ things. Like fear or, heaven forbid, helplessness. Dean didn't really do breakdowns so much as the emotions just toppled over the edge and he freaked the hell out, usually to an audience of Sam.

But yeah, rationally, that didn't sound like such a bad plan. Sam watched his brother, phone forgotten for the moment, as he tried to figure out how two hunters could possibly get a spy in Hell. Not a bad plan, for sure, but definitely not an obvious one. Still, it came to him quickly enough. Having all their future allies written down on paper, in tandem with a having a strong visual memory, certainly helped.

Sam raised a brow in his brother's direction.

"Crossroads?"

"Crossroads," Dean confirmed, pulling the Impala off the next interstate exit. "You get the ID, I'll get the cigar box."

The car jostled as Dean took the first dirt road leading into the fields growing along the highway. "He's gonna be thrilled."

"Well," Sam reasoned as they started trolling through Nebraskan farmland looking for an intersection, "second time's gotta be at least half a charm, right?"

-o-o-o-

Crowley was in another loathsome get-together of Hell's generals (really, people were going to start talking if they kept meeting _civilly_ like this) when the summons came through. Which was really just about the worst timing those two moronic hunters could have possibly gone for. It started as a twitch, a surface itch across his damned soul, as Lilith and Azazel debated the merit of inserting angel enemas into human flesh sacks. Really, it ought to have been funny, if they hadn't been at it for _hours_ now, and he stuck there listening to it.

"If it's one angel, we'd still have this in the bag, but if it's all of Heaven backing him-" Lilith had her thin, little arms braced against the stone table, the center of which had been carved out as a small basin of sorts, currently filled with blood that bubbled and hissed with Azazel's voice. The Prince was stuck topside at the moment, not willing to risk getting stuck in the pit during such a crucial point in their plans, even if his rotting essence needed Hell's fires to heal the damage he'd taken from touching grace.

"If all of Heaven was in on it, the gate wouldn't be silent," Azazel answered back, his own annoyance starting to show. Lilith was acting like a petulant brat, worrying about things they couldn't bother with. Not when they had a million other things they could (and had to be) dealing with _now_. "There is nothing we can do about the angel or Heaven. We have the Colt; we need to be moving on the Hell Gate."

"What of our newest recruit?" Lilith asked instead, _finally_ allowing a change of topic, but not the loss of control. She was in charge. She was Lucifer's first. It might be Azazel's plan, but it was her life they'd be offering in exchange for that reward. A reward she wouldn't live long enough to see. Therefore, she called the shots, no matter what Azazel thought of it. "If we move on that gate without Dean's soul slotted for Hell, Heaven will be wide open to stop us. We need the distraction."

"She's…catching up. When she can speak something not dead by a couple thousand years, then she'll be ready." Azazel responded, his malcontent coming through even more clearly.

"I want to meet her," the Princess demanded, the pout on her lips in complete contrast to the gleam in her eyes.

"When you're topside." The blood bubbled with Azazel's impatience, but he didn't dare say as much to Lilith's face. "I left her with a house warming gift to get her going. She needs a speed course in the twenty-first century, not to mention English and a serious makeover before she'll be any use to us."

"Go for the nose job," Crowley piped up from the side, contributing his vast wealth of helpfulness to this pointless meeting. "Our analysis department says they're all the rage right now."

"Why are you even here, Crowley?" Lilith asked accusingly, crossing her arms as she regarded the King of the Crossroads with distaste.

"Ah, my point exactly, my dear." The demon tipped his glass of Glen Craig towards her little highness. He had two hunters to string up and skin alive in repayment of the summoning currently crawling up and down his skin like ants, not to mention a yard of paperwork and actual business to attend to. "I'll just take my leave, then?"

"Wait." Azazel's voice bubbled from the blood, stopping Crowley mid step. He bit back the frustrated sigh. "Tell me about the prophet."

"What's there to tell?" The crossroads demon shrugged his shoulders, patience wearing thin but he played the game all the same. At this stage of the game, he couldn't afford to have two of Hell's most powerful demons questioning his loyalties (even if they were absolutely questionable). "He's an alcoholic little twit of a writer, holed up in the Midwestern states with an archangel propped up on his ass."

"A writer?" There was interest in the Prince's voice and Crowley internally winced. He probably could have kept that bit to himself with some success and minor fallout when it eventually came to light. Oh well, too late now.

"Teen novel stuff," Crowley answered, forcing as much nonchalance into his voice as possible. "Real trashy. Dean's full frontal in quite the steamy flashback." He waggled his eyebrows at Lilith, who looked unimpressed. With a dramatic sigh, he continue, "We haven't been able to confirm its authenticity yet-"

"It's published?"

Crowley internally grumbled and ground his teeth. "Small production, limited release. It's not very well known. Probably because it's not very good."

Azazel ignored all of his incredibly helpful reporting and got straight to the point: "What is it called?"

The crossroads King sighed again. "Supernatural."

Lilith snorted, but Azazel was apparently taking his far more seriously. "I will look into myself. If the prophet is writing his visions down, he may not realize what he is."

"It could give us an inside edge on the Winchesters," Lilith piped up, a wicked little smile in the corner of her mouth, despite the ridiculous topic of conversation. "We'd be able to follow them without having to spare a single demon."

"If it's real." Crowley kept his tone painfully indifferent, but inside he was kicking himself. He definitely could have held off revealing the prophet's incredibly, easily accessible writing for at least another couple of months. Now he had to play cleanup to a mess of his own making. "Writers embellish. It would be a shame to trust something written just so a pre-teener could get all hot and bothered over two shirtless brothers having a _moment_."

Lilith regarded him like he'd grown another head (well, _she_ hadn't read any of the prophet's work, clearly). Through the blood, Azazel's exasperation was clear. "Which is why we will _look into it_."

Crowley just shrugged, deciding to keep the fact that the books went public months after the events actually happened – what with the prophet writing them in real time, having to edit after the completion of a book, and several weeks of publishing time. But sure, this was a _resource_.

' _Have at 'em, ladies and gents,'_ he thought, sipping on his drink and going back to wishing he was anywhere but there. Well, anywhere but there or answering the summons that had upped it's game to the level of fire ants now.

"There's another thing I need from you," Azazel said, dragging Crowley away from the annoying little ringing in his ears repeating his name again and again and again and again. "Find me a human willing to offer up a little extra juice to fix my arm when he makes a deal."

Crowley had to think for a moment about what the Prince was implying (or even talking about, really. The summons was up to spiders now. _Biting_ spiders.) Once he was on the same page, though, he was confident he could find some human schmooze willing to throw in a _'fix my demonic rival and guy about to herald in the apocalypse'_ clause in exchange for landing a younger wife with bigger tits or that corner office. That, or Crowley would just sneak it into the fine print. He did enjoy screwing over the inept.

"Shouldn't be a problem," he offered offhandedly. Then the Crossroads King straightened, ice clinking in his glass. "In fact, why don't I get right on that?"

When neither Lilith nor Azazel objected, the Princess going back to the problem of that angel grace _again_ , Crowley took it as permission to leave. Not that he should have ever needed permission, damnit. He was a King! He didn't need bloody permission from anyone. In fact, he could walk right back in there and never leave. That would show them.

The spiders were now more like pissed off, aggressive jellyfish covering his entire body and Crowley decided that, just this once, he'd let those high and mighty bastards off with a silent warning while he went and taught two of the world's most suicidal hunters a lesson.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/N:**_ _Well, I know we didn't fix our Uriel problem, but I hope this turned out a good follow-up chapter to have as our back-to-back release :D_

 _ **-Lilith Knowing The Final Seal**_ _: So this may just be my personal head-cannon, but I never understood Lilith not knowing what the final seal was, or her sudden panic about it, or the flimsy weird deal she tried to make with Sam, followed up by the next time we see her she seems perfectly calm about everything. Given that she faked wanting Sam dead and lined up Ruby to help him along, she's an adequate liar and often uses red herrings and misleads to get what she wants. It's my opinion she knew the entire time, and her sudden "panic" was a play at Sam. Anyway, that episode, while awesome because we met Chuck, always felt a little forced on Lilith's side to me, so I developed this head-cannon and will stick with it for this story._

 _ **-Up Next:**_ _The boys have a chat with the King of the Crossroads and strike up an informal deal of sorts. Plus, while Castiel may have left Team Free Will on its lonesome to go back to Heaven, (s)he's not the only Castiel we've got on this playing field. Dean *finally* gets his dream angel back on._

 _Side note, the author has to stop posting double chapters because it's really not so good for that stockpile thing. Something about supply and demand…. Income versus spending… Damn it, I knew I shouldn't have gone to art school!_


	51. Season 2: Chapter 18

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Editing**_ _: May be a little spotty this chapter. I had a ridiculously busy week that was somehow also not very productive? Funny how that happens. Anyway, this chapter is up pretty late for my usual Sunday posting because I didn't get to editing until this morning._

 _ **-Chapter References:**_ _Since this story is starting to get quite long and it's been quite some time since the early chapters, I'm going to start including chapter numbers for anything about to be referenced, in case you need a refresher and so you don't have to go hunting for it. In this case, if you don't recall the first time the boys summoned Crowley, refresher course can be found in chapter_ **9\. Season 1: Chapter 8** :)

 _(Also, why have these sites not figured out how to include a prologue as Chapter 0 so my damn chapter numbers line up?! If anyone knows how to do this, omg, tellme tellme tellme, you will be my hero)_

 _ **-Timeline Reminder:** Fo_ _r the purpose of the second half of this chapter, please remember that Chest!Cas is Season11!Cas, and therefore somewhat suicidal and has not had that reconciliation chat in the Impala with Dean yet. We'll get back to Season 12/13 Cas who's more stable, though, in this weirdly angsty, fix-it-but-only-after-we-break-it-all-over-again fic of ours :D_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:**_ _Well, after all the cliffies and dirty rotten things I've put you through – bunker key, vessel changes, getting Cas just to lose him back to heaven again – I think it's time for some of the good feels. You know. Right after we have a chat with the King of Snark and the author meets the required angst quota of any Supernatural fanfic. No, seriously, the angst got away from me, but I promise you there are good feels too._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 18

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Took you long enough."

Those were the first words out of the moronic Dean Winchester's mouth after Crowley popped into the crossroads, just slightly off-center in case a devil's trap was waiting for him. Oddly enough, there wasn't one.

"I do have other customers, you know," Crowley drawled, spinning around in a slow circle as he looked at the cozy little dirt intersection in the middle of some charming crop fields in… Crowley was going to guess Nebraska. He straightened his suit jacket as he completed his turn to face the Winchester's again. "Legitimate ones, offering up their souls, who aren't calling to WASTE MY TIME."

The raised words echoed through the fields for a distance, scattering some crows that had been camping out nearby in the late evening hours. Crowley cleared his throat, composed himself, and cracked his neck. "Now then. Moose." He nodded to the younger of the two, then turned to the older thorn in his side. "…Not-Moose. I have to confess, this summoning business is getting old."

Particularly since their last dance had ended with _HIS NECK_ next in line for the fucking guillotine.

"Then buy a phone," Dean bit back, and Crowley was surprised to see that he was one hundred percent not joking. Maybe poking fun. Certainly being a grump and a right old bore. But not joking.

Interesting.

"Why, Dean Winchester," Crowley batted his eyelashes, slipping his hands into his pocket and putting on a downright coy show, "are you asking for my _number_?"

The hunter bristled while simultaneously looking embarrassed – his pissed off little ears reddening at the tips – and wasn't that just _adorable_.

"So that wouldn't be the Colt in your pocket, and you _are_ just that happy to see me," he practically cooed, enjoying this perhaps way more than he should. Especially the way the hunter's face shut down, deadpan to the point of dangerous, and the Moose shifted restlessly beside him. "Oh, that's right, it can't be the Colt. You don't have it anymore, do you? Daddy lost a bet."

And wasn't that just wonderful? Couldn't trust hunters – even the _best_ – with anything, let alone keeping the one and only key to the most accessible Hell Gate in North America out of the hands of, oh, _demons_. Useless. Not that it really mattered. Colt or no, Azazel would have found a Hell Gate to raise Lilith through one way or another. They were way too early in the pre-kickoff warmups to start considering any play to be an endgame.

Didn't stop Sam from making an angry, aborted move forward. He drew his gun from his back with a fierce and furious look on his face that didn't scare the King of the Crossroads one bit. Dean held him back anyway, a hand to his bicep that the Moose eventually relented too.

"Gonna shoot me with that hilariously _average_ gun, Moose? I'll let you know if it tickles." Crowley couldn't help but flaunt his utter lack of intimidation, jutting his chin out towards the handgun still in Sam's grip. Dean double tapped the front of the Moose's shoulder as a reminder to back down, but Not-Moose's expression was flat enough to actually be worth paying attention to.

"You wanna see how well you can talk after you take a bullet to the teeth from that gun? I promise you, there's nothing _average_ about these, Crowley."

The King of the Crossroads had to pull his hand more hastily out of his pocket than he liked in order to catch the small, shiny object Dean lobbed his way. It was a bullet, and as Crowley examined the sleek, polished metal, he nearly dropped it when his fingers ran over the hastily scratched symbol etched on the side.

The damn thing had a _devil's trap_ carved into it!

The demon narrowed his eyes at the bullet, though he couldn't deny his curiosity was officially peaked. (It had actually been peaked months ago when two moronic angel condoms summoned him BY NAME and then weaseled HIM, the KING of the bloody CROSSROADS, into a FUCKING DEAL. Yes, they' had his curiosity then, but now it was _official._ ) He was maybe a little horrified at it, too. Okay, more than _a little_. A trap-engraved bullet was a new one. Not a bad idea, actually. It would probably hurt like the devil and likely trap one's powers, if not cause complete immobility.

Oh, the _possibilities_.

Geez, they were lucky most hunters were dumb as their redneck wardrobes suggested. He was sure it was what made the two hunters standing in front of him, clothing choices aside, actually dangerous. Or, at the very least, particularly troublesome.

"No spray-on devil's trap, then?" He asked instead, tucking the bullet into his pocket for further inspection. Dean didn't miss it, something like a dangerously smug, but also actually dangerous, smirk on his face. So Crowley made a show of looking about the un-painted dirt around him as he rolled back onto his heels with his hands still in his pockets. "Getting ballsy, are we, Not-Moose?"

Crowley settled back onto his feet abruptly, a thoughtful expression overtaking his face. "I guess that would make you the squirrel."

Dean actually huffed something of a laugh, a little quirk to his lips that Crowley would say was almost _nostalgic_ , if he didn't know better. "Yeah, I'm more of the dog this go around."

Crowley blinked at the response, which was not only not what he'd expected, but he didn't know what to make of it, either. Had Dean missed the obvious reference? The idea baffled Crowley. Did the man not watch quality cartoons? He was sure that had been in Hell's dossier on the Winchesters. Older brother, meathead, likes pop culture references way too much. Definitely in there.

"Look, we need to talk," the Winchester continued, and Crowley let the dog comment fall to the wayside without vocalizing any of the dozen obvious comebacks. Something along the lines of ' _well, you'll certainly be Hell's bitch soon_ ' being at the top of the list he discarded for the sake of moving this dandy little conversation along.

"Do we now?" Well, if he couldn't have his insults, he could at least be annoyingly vague and unhelpful.

"We know you're against the apocalypse," Moose offered next, that earlier anger calmed for now but still simmering just beneath the surface. Crowley wondered if the demon blood as a child had increased that temper, or it was a pure hand-me-down from John.

"Oh, you do, do you? You seem to know a lot for a pair of meatsuits." Crowley refused to let the metaphoric sweat drip down his neck. Where the hell were they getting their information?

"Think you mean angel condoms, don't you?" Squirrel piped in, the rough sound of his voice telling the King well enough how the boys felt about that particular part of The Plan. The Plan they _shouldn't know about._ His eyes narrowed at the pair. Things weren't adding up.

"Is that a little bird on your shoulder, or is your feathered friend actually in your ribcage?" He dropped his eyes purposefully to the hunter's torso. When Dean's fist clenched at his sides but he didn't offer an answer, Crowley continued, "I hear you got yourself an angel enema, Dean. A pretty cocky one, too, if he's whispering about a prophecy like it's fact."

Which was complete bollocks and it looked like everyone present for this little shindig knew it. Sure, the prophecy was a little open-ended, a Righteous Man in Hell and blah blah blah, but the fact that it was Sam and Dean Winchester – that it had _always_ been Sam and Dean – was pretty damn obvious. They fit too perfectly for it to be anyone else.

Unless God had a sense of humor which, given the twenty-first century and everything leading up to it, Crowley seriously doubted.

"You telling me it's not a fact you want Lucifer staying caged up as much as we do?" Dean countered, a raised brow and almost bored expression on his face stating that he absolutely knew the answer to that question. It just ruffled the demon's scales (ruffled feathers were for those annyong balls of light upstairs and Crowley was loathe to be compared to such do-gooders in any capacity.) Because, really, there was no way in bloody Hell they should know that.

"Your halo tell you I was?"

There was no way. There wasn't. Which meant Dean was getting his information from somewhere else. The Prophet? Only, that little twerp was writing about the Winchester boys, and only the boys. Crowley had seen the published books, and he'd gotten a human flunky (a junkie with an insatiable habit) to break in while the Prophet was out in order to check some of the more recent transcripts (something he intended to do every now and then, just to keep tabs on everything. And which he had absolutely no intention of informing his demonic "partners".) There had been nothing in the man's writing, published or otherwise, about Hell's movements at all. Audience suspense, possibly, only his notes hadn't had any details either. If Chuck Shirley was aware of what was really happening down below or up above, he wasn't bothering to write it down.

"Maybe." Squirrel shrugged and grinned something dangerous his way. "Or maybe I'm just psychic."

Crowley actually snorted at that one. Right, if there was one explanation for all of this, it wasnot that one.

"If I weren't psychic," Dean continued, clearly mocking the demon, "how would I know you're gunning for a bigger crown than the crossroads."

His eyes narrowed at the bold hunter, but he was apparently far from finished.

"Or that before Azazel got the Colt, you were thinking of stealing it. Probably through a human you've got strung out on a deal. I'm thinking a thief, maybe? Good with her hands."

Now Crowley was downright nervous. He would never let it show, of course, but there was _no way_ this braindead meat-popsicle could possibly know this. Crowley hadn't even moved on that last one. Not yet anyway. And he hadn't missed Dean's oh-so-specific choice of pronouns or profession. So unless a prophet was not only having visions of Hell, but was literally reading Crowley's mind, _no one could know that_.

He scoffed loudly, settling on false bravado while internally he panicked. "And why would I do that, Squirrel? Using a _human_ , no less."

"Free labor," Dean offered less than sarcastically.

"Because you're going to need a bargaining chip when you tell me and my brother you're on our side," Sam offered more seriously, those brown eyes never leaving Crowley. "So we don't kill you."

"There is no way in hell I'm on your side, Moose."

"Well you're not on Heaven or Hell's," Dean countered blandly and Crowley found himself practically squinting, his eyes couldn't get any more narrowed.

"I'm on _my own_ side," he finally declared loudly and blatantly. There was clearly no reason to deny it, not only because they seemed to know it already, but bluffing wasn't even getting him spare chips here.

"Great," Squirrel announced, "so are we."

The demon huffed in frustration, really not liking how Dean's words somehow sounded even more like they were on the same side. Next the bloody humans would be suggesting they have team jackets made. He finally threw up his hands, giving up the game, well and truly baffled now.

"Where are you getting your information?" he asked, actually sincere for once. Well, it would sound sincere if you could hear beyond the confounded frustration in his voice. "I'm genuinely curious, because I can't figure you out."

And neither could anyone else in Hell.

"Yeah," Dean scoffed, half in self-deprecation, half just pure hunter's gruff. "I'm real complicated."

He sure hadn't been at the start of this thing. Nine months ago they'd wrapped up near twenty years' worth of recon. Demons posing in all walks of the Winchester's lives, all keeping an eye on the boys. Teachers, janitors, motel owners, maids, friends, bullies, one had even approached John while possessing a fellow _hunter_ (who'd met a rather nasty end shortly afterwards). All had said the same thing. Dean was a meathead, but a damn impressive hunter. Not psychic, not particularly intelligent, unlike his brother, but highly intuitive. Dangerously so. He had ridiculously low self-worth and was loyal to a devastating fault. All things they could and would use to get the Apocalyptic ball rolling.

This… This was a completely different man wrapped in the same snark and insecurities. Sans the sliver of angel sitting in his chest, Crowley could not figure out where the hell he'd come from.

"So, did you call me here to tell me all about my own plans, which I already know, thank you very much, or was there a point to this?"

The brothers exchanged looks, before Sam offered a shrug. "You don't want the apocalypse to happen; we don't want the apocalypse to happen. We figured we should talk."

"Oh, is that what this is?" Crowley slapped on a cheerful smile, voice sugary sweet. "A friendly little con-fab? Well, excellent, I'll just be _leaving then_.

He spun on his heal even as Dean barked out a ' _Hey!'_ that the demon could tell meant business, especially as it was followed by the cocking hammer of a gun. Apparently, a gun loaded with devils trap bullets. It only served to infuriate Crowley more, however, and he spun back around, finger whipped out and jutting in the arrogant, bossy, idiotic human's direction.

"I don't think so, Squirrel!" he yelled back, face reddening. "I may be against unlocking dear old Lucifer's personal prison, but that's _because_ I'm not SUICIDAL. Which is precisely the reason this conversation is _over_."

"Crowley," Moose countered, holding his hands up in placation. Hilarious. He'd obviously forgotten who and what it was he was dealing with. "None of us want the world to end. Let's start there."

"Oh, silly me. I forgot I was talking to a _hero_." The demon rolled his eyes. "I don't give a damn about the world – though I can't say the Apocalypse will be good for business. I care about one thing, and one thing only. Yours truly." He gestured down his body with a little wink that made the yeti of a man blink in discomfort. Good for him. "I haven't made a move, other than considering _maybe_ , just _maybe_ , stealing the Colt from you mooks, because if anyone – and I mean _anyone_ – finds out that I'm so much as _chatting_ with you Winchesters, they'll TEAR ME APART!"

Dean winced at the volume, sticking a finger in his ear dramatically even as the king composed himself back to kingly standards. His face was still red and he was still spewing all but fire, but, you know, _kingly_. "I like my life, I'd like to keep it. It's one of the reasons I'm against popping the devil out of his box. But it's also a driving force behind _not wanting to be on the run from all of Hell_ , you MORONS."

"Will you stop yelling, already?" Dean growled out, glaring at the crossroads King. "We're not asking you to blow you're cover, we're just talking!"

"Did you miss the part where that could GET ME KILLED?" And no, he would _not stop yelling_ , the human _twat_.

"Look," Sam tried again, voice still ever that infuriatingly reasonable calm, though Crowley could tell even the moose was wearing thin on patience, "we're just laying groundwork, alright? We know you've got your own plans to disrupt the apocalypse. We're obviously working on a few of our own. Can we at least start there?"

"I'm not divulging anything to you two meatheads."

"We don't want your secrets. God!" Dean finally shouted, throwing up his hands. "How can we make this any more simple, Crowley? 'Gee, we see you're against the end of the world. Great, us too! Let us know if you come up with a good one, kay?' 'Okay!' That's it. That's _all_. Jesus!"

Crowley watched the explosion through ever narrowing eyes. Was that… Was that seriously all they had summoned him here for? 'We've got a common end goal, keep us in the loop?' That… That couldn't be it. That was monumentally _stupid._

"What the hell makes you think you can trust me?" he asked, blurting it out, dumfounded, because he just couldn't believe two humans – two _hunters_ – were stupid enough to get in bed with a demon. And not even by force or blackmail or bribery. Just…because. And it was all _their idea_ , too. Crowley couldn't… he just couldn't even wrap his head around it.

"Oh, we definitely don't trust you," Squirrel countered immediately, a look crossing his face that said he knew better. One of those looks that reads ' _been there, done that, Personal Experience Achieved.'_ Crowley wondered, for a brief moment of curiosity amidst his mind being blown by the sheer _insanity_ in front of him, where that look was coming from. "We're just not above using you. Or you, us, I bet."

Huh.

Well, it was no less stupid, but at least it had possibility.

"Hmm, a mutually beneficial relationship based purely on taking advantage of one another?" Crowley let out a little hum of thought as he weighed the offer with an exaggerated expression on his face. "The good old 'I scratch your back, you give me a hand job'arrangement. Can't say I'm entirely against that..."

Dean's eyelids shuttered in annoyance, that deadpan expression something Crowley suspected he'd be seeing more of in the future, should he take them up on this. Sam coughed awkwardly beside his brother, face definitely caught between _'he's joking, right?'_ and ' _wait a minute, we didn't say anything about sexual favors, here…'_ The embarrassed moose amused the demon to no end, and Crowley considered saying yes just to continue to be a pain in their stupidly tall asses.

Of course, there were other reasons, as well. Mainly that the two mooks thought they could take on the Apocalypse and win. Something deep in Crowley's smoke-filled, rotting gut was telling him not to underestimate the flannel-wrapped speedbump in an otherwise dangerously perfect plan.

He supposed they would need a hand along the way if they were going to actually pull it off. Their terrible choice in clothing and plucky attitude would only get them so far. Plus, a failed apocalypse would leave plenty of vacancies in Hell to be filled. Positions a tad higher up the ladder than Crowley currently sat.

"Alright, boys. I suppose I can offer my services on the rare occasion. For the right price, to be negotiated at the time." He ignored the shift in their glares from elation to annoyance or the snort from Squirrel. Crowley shoved his hands back into his pockets, the very picture of laid back, even as he dropped his voice into a far more dangerous range that promised pain and suffering. "But if I hear so much as a whisper about my involvement-"

"Relax, Crowley," Dean bit out before he need finish. "We've got just as much riding on this."

Somehow, the King of the crossroads seriously doubted that. All they were risking was their lives.

"I think we'll have our hands full," Moose added on, voice sardonic. "End of the world doesn't leave a lot of time left over to betray you."

Well… _Yet_ , Crowley thought. But that was a bridge to burn much further down this road they were now caravanning together. A road trip with two hunters. What fun.

"Well then, gentlemen." Crowley regarded them for another drawn out minute, eyes narrowed more for show, though the two certainly provided plenty to be suspicious of. "Can't say it's been fun."

With a parting smirk, the King was gone.

-o-o-o-

Sam let out a breath that felt like it took his body with it, leaving him a deflated, saggy balloon in the middle of a crossroads in Nebraska. He glanced at his brother, who didn't look much better. Annoyance seemed to be keeping him inflated for the most part.

"Why do I feel like we just made a deal with the devil?" the younger Winchester asked, part in jest and part absolutely not.

"Well…" Dean gave a helpless little shrug as he rubbed at his chest. The muscles there felt tight, aching and hot like they hadn't in a long time. He hoped that meant good things for the Cas sitting in his chest. He hoped it didn't mean bad things for the Cas sitting upstairs.

His brother wasn't wrong about Crowley, though, getting back to the matter at hand and the only one of his current worries that he had any control over. The King of the Crossroads had his uses, despite his untrustworthiness and a coming future ripe with double crosses. From both sides, Dean could admit. So the man from the future added a little more reasonably, "We might need him. Maybe we can stop from stealing the Colt this time, but if not…. Better to be on the same page now than in the middle of a crisis."

And the crises were surely coming. As surely as Time wanted things to stay the same.

Besides, Crowley might be a demon, but as far as that breed went, he'd come through more than once for the Winchesters, sometimes for reasons Dean never had figured out. Even with him being at least partially responsible for the Mark of Cain and certainly not a great influence on Demon Dean, there were still enough times when Crowley had been more ally than enemy. The hunter didn't want to risk closing that door.

Plus, as dangerous as Crowley was on the throne, he was nothing compared to the actual devil.

"He's kind of a dick," Sam mentioned so offhandedly – tone sort of affronted and pinched expression _definitely_ affronted – that Dean laughed, and laughed loudly.

"Oh, yeah, a total dick," he agreed, a real smile on his face for the first time in at least a couple days. "Resourceful one, though."

Sam looked constipated for a minute – probably flitting through at least six dick jokes and hand-job rejects in that brilliant (and totally dirty, no matter how he pretended not to be) brain of his – before he held out his hand and gestured for the keys. Dean pulled a face, but didn't argue as he dug them out of his pocket and tossed them his brother's way.

-o-o-o-

They ended up crashing at a motel not long after, both exhausted from taking out a nest of vampires and following it up with somewhat hostile negotiations with the King of the Crossroads, all on almost forty-eight hours without sleep. Dean declared they'd earned it, so he slept for a whole six and half hours this time (a real treat for him).

For a good chunk of that, he dreamed, like he hadn't in far too long.

"Hello, Dean."

The hunter craned his neck to look over his shoulder at the angel, who was standing beside the picnic table Dean found himself camped out on. He'd been watching Ben run around at another kid's birthday party, a cold beer in hand and content smile on his face. The arrival of the angel came with conflicting emotions that both enveloped his chest with warmth and stole the smile right off his face.

This memory had been one of the few times in his life with Lisa and Ben Braedon that he hadn't been praying to see Cas again. A moment when he'd almost been happy. Almost been apple-pie. It figured that _now_ was when the angel finally showed. But that had been a long time ago and a lot had happened since. Beyond the pain of those days without Sam or the angel (and why did it have to be in _this_ dream, of _this_ memory, that Castiel finally came back?), there was the overwhelming relief because Cas was alive and _here_.

"You real?"

In lieu of a response, the angel tilted his head sharply, brow pinching and Dean bit back the sharp annoyance it triggered. Damn, but he was tired of his emotions being all over the friggin' place.

"Damn it, Cas, are you really here?"

"I've always been here, Dean."

Gee, if that was true, wouldn't it have been nice to know, _six freaking months ago_!

"I mean right now. In my head." The hunter gestured around at the eleven year old's birthday party, the streamers and balloons bobbing in the wind, the kids laughing and screaming as they ran about, the parents milling with red solo cups and beer bottles. Normal life. A life Dean had tried so hard to fit into, but his heart just hadn't been in it. Never like Sam's.

Dean's throat was getting awfully sore for no damn reason as he forced out a croaky, "In my… In my chest?"

Cas's eyes lowered, ever so slowly, to the man's torso and Dean felt the muscles there constrict around his heart like a noose. "I couldn't get you here by my power alone. I didn't have enough."

The hunter let that sink in and dropped his gaze to the bottle in his hands. It was still icy cold, with condensation pooling along the surface until it ran in occasional rivets down the side. That beer would never get warm, not in this place.

"You've been here the whole time."

Cas didn't answer. It hadn't been a question. Instead, he crossed in front of the man and Dean let out a chuff as the angel climbed onto the picnic table, spinning to sit atop the table's surface beside his friend and charge. Dean took the opportunity for a long draw of beer.

"Thought I was dreaming you," Dean answered, lips still wrapped around the bottle. It didn't feel any lighter as he lowered it back between his legs. The neck dangled from between fingers, arms draped across his knees, and he watched condensation drip to the peeling wood of the bench.

"You are currently dreaming." Castiel mirrored his posture, legs apart and hands clasped loosely between his knees. He was watching the children with an intensity that would get him in trouble in the real world, but Dean knew it was the angel's super weird appreciation of humanity. "And I am currently in that dream."

"Damn it, Cas." He let out a long breath of air, shaking his head before he speared his friend with a look that told him to cut it out. "For once, will you just give me a straight answer?"

Castiel fell quiet, his gaze dropping to the boards and grass beneath them. "I'm as real as a shadow can be, Dean."

There was that word again. People kept using that word to describe the angel – the chunk of grace lodged in his chest – and Dean was getting pretty frickin' sick of the riddle he didn't know the answer to. "I don't- what does that even mean?"

Beside him, Cas sighed deeply. Dean had come to realize that sound was one Cas made when he didn't want to tell him something, usually because Dean wouldn't like whatever it was. "I didn't have enough power to send you through time and maintain myself in 2016."

"Then how am I here? How are _we_ here?" The hunter gave his chest a harsh pat, the thumping force echoing through his own ribcage in an oddly satisfying way. Blue eyes dropped once more, then met his eyes with a pointed look that Dean had seen too many times in his lifetime. He let out a bitter huff as he got his answer. "You didn't have enough grace. So you… what, took a debt out of the life power bank?"

That look didn't let up. "Grace is life, Dean."

"Are you saying you-" Dean bit the inside of his cheek for a minute, then licked his lips and tried to ignore how _angry_ he was. "You used your life to get me back here?"

"Yes." The immediate and unwavering response only made it worse. Damn it, he'd already known this – suspected it at the very least – and it still pissed him off. Of all the angels, of all the friends, why had he gotten the one just as stupidly self-sacrificing as himself? "I had to make sure you got to your destination."

That gaze dropped to his hands, once loosely clasped together but now wringing out with a slow sort of anxiousness that just screamed exhaustion. Dean didn't know why, but he got the distinct impression of it. Had those dark circles always been under Cas's eyes, or were they new? "Maintaining a vessel takes a small, but constant flow of grace. I surrendered what was left and put everything into the jump. I took you as far as I could before it burned up."

Dean couldn't help himself. He reached out and stilled those hands, realizing what he was doing even as he did it and managing not to pull away immediately. Once Castiel had stopped, fingers faltering beneath Dean's grip, the hunter withdrew his hands, awkwardly aware that he'd practically dive-bombed his friend's hands between his knees to stop the fidgeting.

Castiel didn't comment, barely even let it interrupt him, and Dean was ridiculously grateful for that. "I believe this, what I am now, is nothing but an after-image of that power. A sliver of unburned grace shielding your soul to see the jump through."

And now stuck in the tendrils of Dean's apparently clingy soul, if the other Castiel was right.

But Dean wasn't as bothered by that as he was by Cas's words, buried in the verbal sprawl that was meant to distract from the truth. "You died sending me back."

Cas pinned him with another look, but this one was far too sad to ever resemble anything the angel had ever looked at him with. It took Dean's breath away to realize, so damn suddenly that it was friggin' painful, that Cas had looked like that for a long time.

"I was dead already, Dean."

The hunter couldn't keep that gaze. His throat fucking _hurt_ from the lump there, the swelling that felt like he was going to start crying any minute now, and he blinked away the evidence of that immediately. God damn it, he had seen Cas die too many times. Too many fucking times, and to hear him just accept it…

There was something else in the angel's tone, in those eyes, that twisted Dean's stomach into tiny little knots that he wanted to claw out with his bare hands. Something wrong, that he couldn't name and, damn it, didn't want to. He climbed off the table. He had to _move_. Had to leave the truth of this- this… _bullshit_ behind him.

"Why didn't you tell me?" The hunter whirled back to face the angel, fists clenched at his sides as Cas only met his stare. "You were here the whole time. Damn it, you were _helping_ me, Cas. Why didn't you just tell me you were here?"

 _Why didn't you answer me?_

"I'm not, I couldn't…" Cas's eyes filled with pure anguish, the kind that stole Dean's breath away, and he didn't know where it was _coming from_. The angel closed his eyes and Dean hated himself for being relieved he didn't have to see those pained blue depths anymore. He was a fucking coward and a terrible friend. "I can't be of use to you like this, Dean. I have nothing left to offer."

The angel ducked his head, and Dean didn't know if it was the dream world, where he already knew emotions were harder to hide, or the connection they had because Cas was actually a part of him now, snuggled up to his soul, but he could practically see the guilt and shame wafting off the angel in waves. He could certainly _feel_ it, and the heartbreak there practically bowled him over.

"I'm barely here. There are times… sometimes I don't even remember what I am. Who I am." Castiel's voice grew almost too soft to hear, but thanks to dream-fucking-wonderland, Dean heard every single syllable, and each fiber of misery within them. "I can't be what you need, Dean. I'm used up."

Dean clenched his fists. "Yes, you can."

The angel's head whipped up, and he looked so full of despair – so full of dread at what Dean was going to ask of him next – that the hunter wanted to throw up. God, how had they let this – how had _he_ let it – get this bad?

"I don't need you to be useful, Cas. I just- I just need you to…be. Here." He trailed off lamely at the end, the grip on the neck of his beer bottle tight enough that he probably would have hurt himself if any of this were real. He sighed and set the bottle safely on the table, off to Cas's side. "I know I haven't- wasn't there for you a lot lately. Uh, in the last couple years, I mean. Sometimes Sam and me… we get caught up in our own shit. Forget about everyone else and that- that's not…"

Damn it, why were words so fucking hard?

"You don't need to concern yourself with my problems, Dean." Cas was staring at his hands again, and damn it, all Dean wanted was for the angel to _look at him_. But look at him like he used to. Strong and solid and unbreakable. Not… not this broken thing he was. Had become. God, Dean was so fucking selfish, but he had no idea how to deal with this. "I'm not as important as the Darkness, or changing your and Sam's fate."

 _Expendable_.

The hunter blinked at the word that crossed his mind. It was definitely Cas's voice, but the angel's mouth hadn't moved and the hunter recognized that slightly off sound of words that hadn't been vocalized. From ghosts to angels to the whispers of Hell, he knew enough what something in his head sounded like.

Damn it, this wasn't his department. He was no good at this! This was something Sam usually handled, because Dean only made stuff like this so much worse.

"You're not expendable, Cas. You're _important_. To me, to Sam. You're family," he insisted, only to have his mouth dry out and his heart plummet into his stomach at the look Cas sent his way. A look that said _'that's a nice sentiment, Dean_ ,' and nothing more. And yes, damn it, maybe he deserved that. How many times had he said that and never followed through? How many times had he and Sam told the angel he was like a brother only to throw him out of the bunker, ignore his problems, from Raphael to Naomi to Metatron. But he had time now. Time to do better. "That's my point, damn it. I know I've messed up. So… so many times, Cas. I never should have…"

Fuck, he couldn't even say it, could he? Had he ever even apologized for kicking Cas out of the bunker? For beating him almost to death under the influence of the Mark? For any of it?

Dean suddenly swallowed past the lump in his throat, damn near threatening to choke him, as he heard the echoes of a memory. His brother screaming. Crowley being more on their side than their own angel. Cas, staring at him in a dark, dank factory and telling him he didn't fight anymore.

' _I'm not good luck, Dean.'_

He'd apologized then. He'd told the angel he had been wrong and Cas had just fucking smiled and talked about bees. He'd wanted to go watch the bees. He hadn't wanted to fight.

That was _years_ ago. How long had Cas wanted out? How many times had Dean dragged him back in?

The hunters' chest throbbed and ached and felt so damn hollow, like an endless pit, as he remembered the look in Castiel's eyes that night they'd stabbed Dick Roman, after Dean had finally, _finally_ , talked the angel into helping them. That look right before the world had gone to Purgatory in a handbasket, and he'd lost his best friend for months. For a lot longer than that, really.

Cas had _chosen_ to stay in Purgatory. Just like he'd chosen to say _yes_.

Dean wasn't going to survive if his heart kept hurting like this. He couldn't. He wanted to claw the traitorous thing out of his chest.

How long ago had Cas told him he was worried he might kill himself if he saw the damage he wrought in Heaven? That…that had been before Metatron tricked him and Heaven got even worse. Before Lucifer possessed him and killed so many more. That confession had been fucking _years ago_. And Dean had never checked back in, made sure the angel didn't still feel that way.

Suddenly, Castiel saying yes, Cas being _expendable_ , was taking an entirely new perspective that froze Dean's blood in his veins.

 _'I was dead already.'_

Cas hadn't expected to survive. Any of this. And he hadn't, really, had he? Just a sliver. A sliver that would have burned up, the angel gone forever – permanently – with Dean none the wiser. The hunter raised a shaky hand to his chest, struggling to breath as he tried to rub some warmth back into that suddenly frigid black hole.

He had no doubt, suddenly, that he was the one who had clung to the chunk of grace, tangled himself up in it so tightly that Cas couldn't slip away, and not the other way around.

"I'd rather have you." It was all he could think to say, blurting it out through numb lips and a numb tongue and an aching mind. His hands were shaking, and he clenched them to hide it. Dean met his angel's eyes, and hell if there wasn't just as much pain there as Cas's. "Cursed or not. Remember?"

The angel was slow to nod – and hell, he'd been pretty far off his rocker when Dean had said those words to him – but his eyes stayed locked on the hunter's and there was recognition in those blue depths. "I remember."

"All I need you to do is believe me, here. I don't know how else to say it." Because he'd meant it that night. Maybe… maybe he was starting to realize how often he thought he said it, and how often it had sounded different to the angel. A request for a hammer, not a friend. But he'd _meant it._ Every word.

With a shaky breath, Dean clambered back onto the table, sitting closer to Cas this time. Close enough to feel the imagined warmth of the angel beside him, even if he couldn't find the warmth from the part of him in his ribcage.

"So no more of this- this not useful crap. I want you here, Cas. Just you. Useful or not." He closed his eyes, and managed to make his hands stop shaking as the realization he was sitting beside the angel he'd missed for so damn long made a laugh bubble out of him. It wasn't nearly as real as he wished it could be, but he'd take it. He shook his head, laughing again at the swell of relief buzzing through him as his mind finally registered that Cas was _right_ _here_. Right beside him. Had been the whole time. Dean buried his head in his hands and scrubbed his fingernails against his scalp as he relished in that release, that momentary, almost hysterical relief. Castiel was staring at him as he opened his eyes and looked at his angel. "Hell, I'm…I'm so fucking happy you're here, man."

Because the angel almost hadn't been. For six months, Dean had been alone in one way or another, faced with an impossible task, years long, with a terrible fate if he failed, praying to an angel he didn't think was alive to hear him.

There were plenty of conflicting emotions in Castiel's eyes as he met them head on. The pain, the despair, were still present, but there was hope, too. Such painfully clear and fearful hope, that Dean vowed to do better. This battle, this little war he hadn't even known he was losing, was far from over, but he'd do better now that he knew he had to fight.

Even if it was just for a shadow.

"I'm going to change it, Cas." The angel's brow pinched at the topic shift that really wasn't a shift at all. Dean swallowed down all that emotion he wasn't equipped to deal with anyway and surged on. "I'm going to save them. Sam, and Bobby, and Ellen and Jo. I'm gonna change their fates. And I'm gonna change yours too."

Cas blinked at him, as if he hadn't even considered his own past – future – might be changeable. Or that he might need saving.

"I can't keep you – the other you – out of it," Dean confessed, wincing even as the memory of that panic when he thought about Claire returned with just as much force. The panic that came with every change he made that only seemed to make things _worse_. Of that relieved look on Angela Garrett's face when Castiel confessed she was going back to Heaven. Back to the lion's den. "But I promise. I won't- we won't let you fall this time, Cas. You won't lose your home."

He refused to call those dicks his family, though. They weren't. Shouldn't be. They didn't deserve him.

Castiel watched him for a long time. Long enough for Dean to swipe his never-ending beer and take a long, only slightly desperate swig.

"Of everything that has happened or will happen," Cas finally spoke, eyes never leaving his charge's in that soul-searching gaze of his, "meeting you and Sam is not one that I, or any version of me, will ever regret. Not for all of Heaven would I take back what rebelling brought me, Dean."

 _Family_.

Dean swallowed, shutting his eyes against the stupid water stupidly swelling behind his stupid eyeballs as Cas's voice filtered between his ears again. He didn't know if the angel was aware he could hear him, or if it was dreamland, or hell, maybe Dean was just hearing what he wanted to hear. Truth was, he didn't care. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, and all that.

He took a moment to clear the emotion from his throat and eyes, sniffled something manly, and hopped off the picnic table. Cas just watched him as he crossed a few feet of the yard – dodging kids as they ran around him – and fetched two new beers from the large, blue cooler hanging out next to an assortment of juice boxes and a large red barrel full of water. When he returned, he offered one of the beers to Cas, who accepted it with just the barest hint of a smile, and clinked the neck of his bottle to the angel's.

"To family," he said, tipping the beer Cas's way. His friend shared in his smile, the closest one to reach his eyes that Dean had seen in far too long, and Dean settled close beside him again. For the warmth. And maybe for Cas, too.

He nursed the beer slowly, the both of them watching the party. Dean nodded to a parent he vaguely remembered as she walked by with a smile, and knocked his knee against Cas's. "You gotta go, or you got some time?"

Cas gave him a slightly wry look, a little of that wicked sense of humor coming back there for a moment. "I've got nothing but time, apparently."

"Damn straight." Dean took a sip of his beer with a reassuring nod, hiding the tease of a smirk crossing his face.

The angel waited just long enough to knock his knee back that Dean choked on his beer when he did, trying to laugh and swallow in the same go. He tried to shove him off the table with his shoulder and almost spilled what was left of the bottle on the rebound after hitting a wall of unmovable angel. Cas just stared straight ahead with what would be some next-level innocence painted on his face, if it weren't for those sarcastic little eyebrows climbing up his forehead.

The little shit took a casual sip from his beer and Dean muttered something under his breath about flabby angels.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd sat with Cas, or laughed with him. It felt good. It felt damn good, and he planned to soak up every minute of it that he could, since, for once, neither of them had anywhere to rush off to or the end of the world riding on their shoulders. At least not for the next four hours of blissful sleep and comfortable companionship.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/Ns**_ _: I love me some quiet Dean/Cas moments like I love me some Dean/Cas angst. (The angst actually took over here; it was supposed to be more of a quiet moment . We'll get there…)_

 _ **-More the dog this go around:**_ _So for anyone who might not have gotten this more obscure reference, Mr. Peabody was a time-traveling dog first introduced on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show (where the reference Moose and Squirrel comes from). I swore I would get a Mr. Peabody joke in here at some point, and once Crowley learns Dean's from the future, there will be plenty more ;) It's too perfect with his habitual Rocky and Bullwinkle references. He just hasn't picked up on it yet._

 _ **-Full Caps:**_ _You may have noticed, but I pretty much hate using full caps in stories. If a character is shouting or screaming, it should come across in context. (i.e. "No!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, loud enough to shake the very building they stood in, wake the dead only for those poor souls to suffer death a second time, that of the blown ear drum (totally fatal, didn't you know?) and, oh yes, scare the poor mice living in that little hole by the base of the stairs. They'd been having such a nice family dinner, utterly ruined by the need of one moose to shout at the top of his lungs in abject horror. Humans could be so selfish sometimes.) However! Crowley is a very special character with a very special exception. He likes to scream mid-sentence, roller-coastering us through a delicious journey of enjoyable snark highs followed by back-the-fuck-up-from-the-suddenly-screaming-demon lows. Lol. It's one of my favorite things about the way Mark Shepherd portrayed the character. So he gets access to my rarely used caps locks (except in chats. I love all caps in chats. Screaming is the beeeeest)_

 _And yes, I just wrote some weird vignette about Sam yelling loud enough to disturb a mouse family having dinner. Shut up, you liked it and you know it. ;D_

 _ **-Up Next**_ _: Dean wakes up to Sammy sitting upright in the next bed, dressed and ready for the day because_ morning person _(those freaks are almost as bad as house guests), dad's phone pressed to his ear, listening to a voicemail from none other than Ellen Harvelle._

 _ **-Delay Warning!**_ _I'm out on vacation next week, and while I anticipate lots of writing (I hope, I hope, I hope), I may not be able to post next Sunday. Chances are kind of low, considering internet isn't much of a thing where I'm going. I'll do my best, but if I'm unable to post in time, the chapter will most definitely be up the following weekend._

 _ **Please Review!** I know you guys may be bummed by the possible delay next week, but I have also fallen behind in writing due to switching jobs and being stupidly busy and taking on too many projects with too little currently functioning brain power. So, if you have it in you, please pressure that muse into getting some writing done this week! She apparently needs the push -_-_


	52. Season 2: Chapter 19

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-Editing**_ _: Hopefully not as spotty on this chapter, but oh, boy, it's a long one and I wanted to get it to you guys early to make up for the two week delay, which means I probably rushed but I hope I didn't (Okay, Silence,_ breathe, _and end that run-on sometime soon, girl)._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:**_ _Sam's cracking voicemails, the boys are off to the Roadhouse, cameos are cameo-ing (because they can), Ellen's a badass mom-friend, Jo is making Dean all sorts of confused in the feels, and Ash is just...well...Ash. Did someone call for a killer clown?_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 19

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean woke up from the most restful sleep he'd had in a long time. Not just in mind, but body too. That yellow-eyed bastard might have healed him back at the hospital, but his chest hadn't been right since. Not warm enough. Too tight. Too hollow. Aching when it had been fine only moments before. Whether it was the touch of that demon interacting with the chunk of angel in his chest, said angel recovering from his grace explosion, or just Dean's continued worry having not seen or heard from him since, despite Castiel's confirmation that her slivered counterpart was, in fact, there… Well, it was anybody's guess at that point.

Now, though, that comforting warmth was back in its rightful place. Maybe not as strong as before, but _there_ , and Dean knew that counted for something. Everything. Most things.

Sam was already up, and movement from his side of the room drew Dean's attention. He was sitting on the other bed, cross-legged with a phone raised to his ear, a growing smile on his face and excitement in his eyes. Dean sat up, happy, dream-drugged brain a little slow on the uptake, but he realized that wasn't Sam's usual phone quickly enough.

"I got it," Sam announced with a wide grin, even as he pulled the phone from his ear, hit a button and followed it with the speakerphone.

 _"John, it's Ellen. Again. Look, don't be stubborn. You know I can help you. Call me."_

Dean swung his legs off the bed as the message finished, that warmth in his chest right back to an unnatural tightness that had nothing to do with the angel sitting behind his ribcage. He tried for a grin matching his brother's – damn but it was good to hear Ellen's voice, even just a recording of it – but he had to fight through every ounce of guilt and pain that flared up at the follow-up thought: where their involvement in that woman's life had led.

Not that he hadn't had almost a week since finding Sam fiddling with Dad's phone to sort through all that. Of course, emotionally challenged as he was, he hadn't gotten that far. In fact… he'd kind of pushed it all to the side anytime the guilt and worry and questions came popping up, figuring he'd deal with it when it happened.

Well. Now it was happening and, like always, he really should have given himself more time to deal with the crap emotions that came with it. Right now he was somewhere between a bitter _'Some things have to stay the same, huh?'_ and the knowledge that some things actually did have to stay the same. The angel he'd almost ruined the Novak family's lives over (just for advice and a relief for the loneliness of this time traveling crap) had given them the wise wisdom of sticking to the original timeline. So, stick to it they would, which meant their next stop was the Roadhouse.

"We're going, right?" Sam asked, the brightness in his eyes reminding Dean that his kid brother was just that; a kid. A kid who'd grown up on the road, without friends, and who might have made a couple good ones in his four years of college, but lost them all to a road trip with his from-the-future brother fighting off the end of the world. Didn't leave a lot of time for friends. Or other people at all, really.

Fuck it. Sam needed this. Dean needed this. And not to toot their own horns, but he'd like to think the Harvelles wouldn't be worse off meeting them.

…As long as he could keep them alive this time, that was.

"Yeah, we're going," Dean replied, and the smile came easier that time. They hadn't gotten far through the state of Nebraska on their drive away from Manning yesterday, and Dean had purposefully taken the long road around. The one that went right past the Roadhouse. "We're only an hour out, tops."

Which would put them there a little earlier than they'd gotten there the first time. About a month sooner, but, hey, Castiel hadn't specified on timing over sequence. They'd cracked Dad's phone, learned about Ellen. The next logical step, if they weren't from the future and didn't already know who she was, would be to go check it out.

Time could suck it if she had a problem with that.

-o-o-o-

They were on their way into the bar – too early for the Roadhouse to be open – when they bumped into two guys walking out. The one, a tall, broad-shouldered man that could give Sam a run for his money in size, was busy walking forward while looking back, hollering something back into the bar with a gangly-armed wave. Dean, not having expected other patrons to be hanging around a dive bar at ten am, stumbled through the suddenly open door he'd been mid-push, and bodily shouldered into the dude.

"Watch it," he grumbled as the guy managed a step back, surprisingly kind eyes wide at the minor tumble.

"Whoa, sorry about that, buddy," the towering giant had either hand on Dean's shoulders, steadying him like some sort of child, and that just pissed him off even more. He was not a child and this guy and his ginormous hands and stupid eyes could fuck the fuck off.

(Dean wasn't really a morning person.)

He opened his mouth to tell the guy off, when Ellen's voice rang out from the bar, the dim lighting and bright outside sun making it difficult to see her. "Everything alright, Asa?"

Dean blinked, anger completely forgotten as the name echoed bells in his head and he took a second look at the beanstalk in front of him. He was a good looking guy, oozing charm and sincerity, with hazel-green eyes and short blonde hair.

 _Holy shit_ , Dean thought, _that's Asa Fucking Fox._

"Yeah, Ellen, we're good!" Asa hollered over his shoulder, then turned back to give Dean a good-natured thump on the bicep in apology, smile bright on his face. Dean remembered Ellen and Jo practically fanning themselves over the man's smile, grinning conspiratorially between each other as Dean – and the other manly hunting men in the Roadhouse – balked. Women. Only now, yeah – aright, _hell yeah_ – Dean could see it. His weak little fanboy knees could _feel_ it. And he would take it to his grave that he was right there with Ellen and Jo, needing a little fanning himself.

Asa Fox was a _legend_. He was up there with Dr. Sexy, damnit.

"You're Asa Fox!" he announced loudly – too loudly – and Sam cringed behind him. Dean broke out a smile of his own, the patented Winchester grin. "Didn't you kill, like, five wendigos in one night?"

Behind the hunter, a second man laughed loudly, slapping Asa on the back of the shoulder. "That's our boy. Every time the story gets told that number grows." The man, shorter than his buddy by about a foot, with a red beard and unfortunate hairline, stuck his hand out to Dean. "Bucky Sims."

"Dean Winchester," the older Winchester offered as he shook the hunter's hand, still grinning back and forth between the two. "Was it really five?"

"You're just lucky we ain't drinking, or the next round would be on you." Bucky winked at him rather than answer. Asa gave his shoulder a playful push and rolled his eyes, apparently quite used to this reaction.

"I'll remember that," Dean answered with a grin. He'd spent enough time at the Roadhouse and the other occasional hunters' haunts that they stumbled across to know that most of those who'd made a name for themselves came with a code word that usually got them a round of drinks in honor of achievement among the ranks. Or it got everyone else around them drunk. Depended on the crowd, really.

"Winchester?" Asa echoed, meanwhile, a curious pinch to his brow. "Like John Winchester?"

"Our dad," Sam offered behind Dean, who suddenly remembered he had a younger brother among all his fanboying and glanced over his shoulder at him. As the other beanstalk in the conversation, Sam stuck his hand out to shake Asa and Bucky's, introducing himself.

"Sam and Dean Winchester." Bucky shook his head with a wry smile. "Heard about you guys. Heard about your dad. Hell of a hunter."

It was clear from the grin on his face and the admiration in his voice that he didn't know John Winchester was dead. News like that traveled fast, but it usually had to make it to a place like the Roadhouse first. Dean shared a look with his brother, and neither of them said a thing.

"I knew another Winchester, once," Asa was smiling, but there was something sad about it. "Hell of a hunter, too. Mary." His voice turned nostalgic, eyes in a far off place, an old smile on his face. "She saved my life once. Got me into hunting."

Dean blinked. Then blinked again. Because he couldn't be talking about their mom. He _couldn't_.

"Huh." Bucky was staring at Asa, having clearly heard this story before. "You never told me her last name was Winchester."

"You knew our mom?"

It was Asa's turn to be shocked. Actually, it was _everyone_ 's turn to shocked. Bucky, surprise lighting his face though it clearly wasn't so much for him as it was for his buddy. Asa, whose eyes had widened in size and that nostalgia replaced with something like eager hope. And Sam. Sam, whose reaction was such a bodily jerk that Dean felt more than saw him behind him.

Right. Spoilers. Kinda rudely delivered shock-spoilers.

Oops.

"Mary Winchester was your mother?" Asa parroted, shock still painting his face. He glanced between the boys. "Wait, your father-"

"Got into hunting because of her death," Dean supplied without needing to know the rest of the question. "She was retired, but…uh… that didn't stop her past from finding her."

Sam's hand fisted the back of his sleeve, near his elbow, and Dean winced. There were still some things he hadn't told his younger brother. Not because he was keeping secrets, but because there was just _so much_ , and not all of it came up in, you know, every day conversation.

Like mom being a hunter long before John Winchester knew what demons were.

"Shit," Asa whispered, still staring down into those green eyes that he could now see Mary Winchester in so _easily_ that he wondered how he'd missed it. "I thought… I'd hoped I hadn't found her because she got out."

Dean swallowed heavily, feeling his brother's hand shaking on his elbow with how tightly he was clenching his jacket. "She did. For a while."

The man huffed something sad and shook his head. He put his hands on his hips, and that smile was back on his face albeit there was more regret there now. "All this time. I could have just talked to John Winchester." He laughed again, but it was more self-deprecating than anything else. "You know, I met him once? He wasn't really a people person."

"Yeah," Sam laughed shakily from behind. "That sounds like our dad."

Asa had never been able to picture the woman he'd met in the woods that day – his guardian angel, really – with a man like John Winchester. So he'd written it off as a coincidence and never _asked_. Not to mention, John Winchester didn't really talk to people, and everyone Asa knew told him to stay away from the man. How damn stupid he was, after all the searching he'd done, to pass on the most obvious clue there ever was.

"Hey, man, I'm sorry," Dean suddenly spoke up, holding out his hand as some sort of apology and peace offer. Because, frankly, he was glad Asa Fox hadn't asked their dad if he knew a hunter named Mary. That… would not have ended well. "If I'd known, I woulda sought you out."

Not that he could have known. He wasn't supposed to find out about Mary Campbell's life before motherhood for another couple of years. But if he'd known… Hell, he would have sought Asa Fox out on reputation alone (screw what John Winchester had to say about associating with other hunters). But Asa knowing Mary? Dean would have hunted him down just for the family connection. Just for the story.

Asa grinned at him, understanding was clear in those friendly eyes, and he grabbed Dean's offered arm up to the elbow. He clasped it firmly in something the younger hunter recognized easily as comradery. "Bucky and I are on our way out. Middle of a case; just needed Ellen's help. But it's an honor to meet Mary's kids. We should grab a drink another time, trade stories. On me."

Dean couldn't help the grin on his face. They had never, in all their lives, been called _Mary's_ kids. Only ever John's boys. Never Mary's.

"Absolutely," Sam offered with a shaky smile, finally releasing his brother's elbow, not that the other two hunters could see it. The Winchesters stepped to the side of the door, letting Asa and Bucky pass by them and head for their car.

"Hey," Asa called back just as the two brothers were about to disappear inside. They turned back to face him and he propped his elbow on the roof of his jeep. "If you two are anything like your mom… Or your dad, than you must be pretty damn good."

Sam exchanged a loaded look with his brother, a look that shared everything that had happened and was going to happen, and Dean's answering smile to the retreating hunter was weaker. "Yeah. We, uh… we do alright."

Bucky was laughing again as he climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep, shaking his head as he yelled something jumbled back but sounded like ' _more than alright, if the rumors are true!'_ The two Winchesters watched as Asa Fox climbed into the driver's seat and the jeep pulled away, disturbing the dirt and leaving behind a low-hanging cloud.

Dean turned to go back inside and Sam grabbed his arm again. "Mom was a _hunter_?"

"Yeah," the older Winchester answered, an apology clear in his eyes right beside the anguish of that haunted memory from 1973. "The Campbells. Whole family were hunters. Came from a long line of 'em. Hunting's in our blood, Sammy."

Sam released his arm, a worried frown taking over the anger and hurt that had immediately flared up at yet _another_ thing his brother had hid from him. But Dean sounded haunted, not secretive, and so Sam followed him into the Roadhouse without further argument. There'd be time later for all his questions, and he expected his brother to answer them.

-o-o-o-

By the time he slid onto one of the barstools, Dean was back to grinning, brutally shoving down the thoughts of Mary Winchester and her unavoidable fate with the skill of an emotionally challenged champion. Ellen Harvelle stood on the other side of the bar, propped up with an arm against the counter and an unimpressed look on her face at the man sitting in her saloon like he knew – and owned – the place.

"That was Asa Fox!"

The older Winchester couldn't help it, giddiness showing through (and if anyone pointed out that some of it was a little more forced than genuine, they could just fuck off.) Asa Fox was a damn near legend and Dean had been a bit of a fan for a while. Ellen used to tell stories of him all the time. Hell, everyone at the Roadhouse did. And it wasn't just running into something of a hero among the hunting community, it was that Asa knew their _mom_. Mary had gotten him into _hunting_. Asa. The legend. A hunter because of Mary Winchester.

Not even Sam's look – that one with the raised eyebrows and just a hint of embarrassment on his brother's behalf – the one that managed to say _'settle down'_ and _'grow up'_ all in one breath without ever opening his mouth – could kill his high now.

"Do I know you?"

But Ellen sure could. Her cold voice and hardened eyes, one arm on her hip and the other braced on the bar, smacked the smile right off Dean's face. Sammy came up to the bar just as Dean's expression sank, and then reformed into that terrifying blankness born from a future that hadn't happened yet. Sam bit back a look of sympathy, knowing his brother wouldn't appreciate it. More of his anger dissipated as he was yet again reminded that this wasn't easy on Dean, either. Like his brother had said on more than one occasion, being from the future _sucked_.

"Uh, no," Dean answered with a fake smile stretched so tightly across his lips that it looked painful. "I guess not."

Beside him, Sam cleared his throat, tried for a smile, and took over for his brother, "I'm Sam. This is my brother, Dean."

Ellen's eyes narrowed, but it wasn't suspicion in that almost unreadable gaze, just doubt. She glanced between the two young men, apparently deciding something as she eventually asked, "Winchester?"

Sam straightened, not having expected her to recognize them. Of course, knowing their last name didn't mean she did. Just that she'd heard of them, which he shouldn't find surprising. Dean had said her and Dad had been close at one time.

"You John's boys?" she followed up before either of them could answer her first question. They didn't really need to, though. It had practically been rhetorical. When the brothers just shared a look and Sam nodded with a weak _'yeah_ ', her entire demeanor shifted. Gone was the harried, hardened bar owner used to strangers and trouble. A smile – wide and genuine and charming – overtook her face and she dropped her arm from the counter, likely right above where a shotgun was stored beneath the bar. "Son of a bitch."

Dean's smile was a little less tight, but only a little. So Sam tried to make up for it, though he wasn't exactly on even footing here. The fact that they couldn't screw this up, because they were supposed to befriend her, was not exactly helping. He'd never experienced meeting someone he sort of knew, if only through stories told by his brother, but which he knew he'd know eventually. Which, really, kinda threw you off your game. It was hard to act normal when the situation wasn't normal. Of course, by not acting normal, he or Dean could totally change how their entire friendship with this woman went. What would happen if they got off on the wrong foot? Or Sam said the wrong thing? Or nothing at all, which was the current event unfolding _right now._ All scenarios that could have completely unpredictable and possibly disastrous consequences for the future. Because he wanted to be friends with someone he didn't know, but knew he wanted to know, and already knew too much about to act one hundred percent like he didn't, but he needed to, and that was entirely the problem.

God, this was just meeting one woman. How had Dean _done_ this for the last eight months?

"I'm Ellen," she said in the weird silence that had followed her abrupt change in stance and welcoming. She glanced between the two boys even as Sam cleared his throat with a jolt and nodded back at her. At least she was still smiling.

"I'm Sam," he said in response before wincing almost immediately. He'd already _said_ that.

"Don't mind my brother," Dean said with a snort and a conspiratorial grin that was suddenly so much more believable than it had been a minute ago. Like Dean had just stowed all his crap and carried on. Sam refused to think about how intimidating his brother's proficiency at that really was. "He's a little star struck, running into Asa like that."

Sam choked and whipped his head at his brother with The Ultimate of bitchfaces (unnumbered, for it was _Ultimate_ ). "Me? I'm not the one tripping over his own-"

The younger Winchester blinked at Dean's open grin, realizing mid-sentence what his older brother had just done. Sam blushed slightly in embarrassment, but also relief, as he realized how easily he had fallen back into that realm of normal he'd been almost panicking to achieve a second ago. How easily Dean had pushed him back there. Because his big brother had seen the mounting panic and did what the older Winchester had done his entire life: watch out for Sammy.

Ellen was laughing, wiping her hands on a bar rag. Sam spared Dean a thankful, if not still bitchy, face and the jerk just winked at him. "Yeah, Asa's something else, alright."

"Was it really five wendigos?" Dean asked, maybe a little too eagerly, as Ellen raised an eyebrow at him and Sam snorted, muttering about who the real fanboy was. Dean kicked his shin without ever taking his eyes off the bartender, whose amusement only grew.

"You'd have to ask him that," she answered, which, damnit, is how she had always answered any time Dean asked, usually after one of the more outrageous tales of the man came up. The older Winchester managed not to pout only because Dean Winchester did not pout (and yes, he was sticking to that story, thank you very much.)

"So what can I do for you boys?" Ellen braced both hands against the bar in a far more open and friendly stance then before, a completely different woman than five minutes ago. And yeah, one Sam could definitely see them striking up a friendship with. "Did John send you?"

It was probably the silence that tipped her off. Or maybe the way that neither of the two boys quite met her eye, despite it looking like they both tried. But Dean dropped his head, for however briefly, and Sam looked away, if only for a second.

Ellen fell silent and dropped her arms from the counter, straightening unconsciously as she tensed for bad news. She stared at each of them, not wanting to believe it. "He didn't send you…"

Dean cleared his throat, though it was a strangled thing. "No."

It looked like he was going to say more, but when nothing came out, Ellen wanted to believe it even less. "Well… he's alright, isn't he?"

Sam chanced a glance at his brother, but the older Winchester was warring a battle in his head that he wasn't easily winning. Sam knew if there was one thing crippling to Dean, it was guilt. And God knew his brother was swimming in enough of it right now, no matter how many life preservers his family threw his way or how strong he was at swimming.

"No," Sam spoke up instead, eyes still lingering on his brother, who shot him an uncertain, but thankful look, before the taller Winchester turned a grieving – albeit strong – gaze back on Ellen. "No, he isn't."

Ellen looked…stunned. The kind of stunned that was completely understandable. John was a legend in his own way. A more terrifying, boogyman sort of legend than someone like Asa. The kind of dark knight that other hunters avoided tangling with, but still a hero of sorts. The kind that seemed immortal. John had been so strong, had survived so much and taken down even more, for so long… well, even Sam was still having trouble believing he was gone. That he could be taken down.

"I'm so sorry," Ellen offered, lips drawn tight but expression sincere. "Was it the demon?"

She looked immediately regretful to have asked it, expression clearly kicking herself, but she didn't take it back. Didn't tell them not to answer. Just stood there, hand back on her hip, no pity there. Sam kind of appreciated it.

"Yeah," Dean answered, fiddling with one of those cardstock coasters. He'd snagged it off the bar, needing something to do with his hands. "Guess it just got him before he got it."

The words sounded rehearsed to Sam's ears, and he wondered if Dean was trying to stick to a script formed from their first – their other first – meeting here.

"I know how close you were with your dad-" Ellen started, but Dean cut her off before she could continue on that topic, which was still a no-go even ten years later.

"It's alright," he said quickly, a forced smile spread across his lips. "We're okay."

Ellen hesitated for a moment more, the decision to call bullshit or not was pretty clear in her face, before she nodded. She knew the drill of fallen comrades and friends. They'd all been there, after all.

"Well, if there's anything you boys need…" She left the offer open, which got her a nod and a shaky smile in return. But her expression pinched as she thought a little further down that rabbit hole. "How did you know to come here if John didn't send you?"

"We heard your voicemail." Sam caught her gaze as he slid onto the stool next to his brother. The further furl in the bartender's brow said she wasn't quite following. "On dad's phone."

Her surprise when she realized what they were talking about was endearing, really. "That was months ago."

"Yeah." Dean's voice was a little rougher, but his smile more real. "Think we both know he wouldn't have taken you up on the offer but… He kept it cuz I think it meant something to him all the same."

Her eyes swam, a very not-Ellen thing to do, and yet also so much the woman he remembered that Dean's stomach did some weird flipping thing that was usually reserved for that warmth in his chest. She blinked to ward off the building water, looking up and off to the side in an attempt to disperse the lingering emotions. With a light sniff and a watery smile, she turned back to them.

"Yeah. Yeah, we weren't always on great terms, your daddy and I, but… I would have helped, if he'd have ever let me."

Which they all knew he never would have.

"How?" Sam asked, somewhat abruptly. "I mean, I'm assuming you're a hunter, but-"

"Oh, I just run a saloon," Ellen corrected, hands raised way too modestly. Dean had seen this woman fight. She was absolutely a hunter, through and through. "But hunters and the like have been known to pass through now and again."

She tossed her head towards the back of the bar, where Sam spotted a door with a dartboard hanging on the back of it. "I won't be much help against a demon, but Ash might." She huffed something that was probably closer to a snort than a laugh. "Whenever he wakes up."

Dean straightened in his seat because, holy shit, he'd almost forgotten all about that mulleted genius who had first helped them crack dad's research. Who had led them to Fossil Butte Cemetery and the Hell Gate.

…Who had died for that knowledge.

"Jo!"

Both boys jumped at Ellen's sudden holler, aimed over her shoulder at that same door. It slid open a minute later and a blonde head popped through, slim fingers wrapped around the edge of the darkly painted wood.

"Yeah, mom?"

Dean could only stare. Stare at that beautiful, young woman – just a kid, really, damn it – whose skin was filled with color and life, not drained of it – grey – as she bled out, splattered in blood, her own insides on the outside, lifeless in a forgotten hardware store-

He looked away, pretty sure he was going to throw up.

"Get Ash vertical, would you?" Ellen smiled at her daughter, who glanced at the two strangers next to her with a hint of wariness. "Got some folks he should meet."

"Sure thing." She disappeared back behind the door, which settled closed in her absence.

Ellen turned back to the boys. "He wandered in a couple months ago-" she paused with a sudden thought, blinking- "Hell, that was almost half a year ago now. Damn. Anyway, he isn't exactly a hunter, but he's scrappy. And-" she glanced between the two boys- "he's a genius."

-o-o-o-

The next time Ellen turned her back – dipping beneath the bar to snag a large container of pretzels – Sam snuck in a glance to his brother. The name had come up in some of Dean's stories, but they'd been more about the crazy, mulleted guy at the Roadhouse than anything actually helpful. And he hadn't mentioned that he was who Ellen had been calling their dad about. Which left Sam wondering what the heck they could get form a 'scrappy genius' in a back-road dive bar for hunters.

Dean just gave him this sort of apologetic shrug that said _'Later, Sammy'_ like he always did.

"What kind of genius?" he asked, curiosity winning out over patience. Dean might already know the answer, but asking would get it faster for Sam. Besides, there was an element of control – like being able to determine his own future – that came with not waiting for his brother to supply him with every answer he could ask for. And Sam craved that control more than he wanted to admit.

Plus, asking would only help them with their whole 'we're-not-from-the-future-we're-just-a-couple-of-normal-hunting-brothers-who've-never-met-this-Ash-man-before-just-perfectly-normal-boys-right-here-yeppers' cover.

"You'll see," the woman answered with a smirk, just as the back door opened and Jo walked back in.

"Well, he's awake," she said as she crossed over to them, coming to a stop a few feet away from the boys. She settled her hands on her hips, the spitting image of her mother, and jutted her chin their way. "Who are these guys?"

The words were sharp; no-nonsense and not planning on putting up with any either. _Spitting image of her mother._ It made Dean grin like an idiot, which only got him a raised eyebrow and a caustic glance up and down his body. Jo looked utterly impressed, a hint of _'in your dream's, buddy'_ painted across her sarcastic eyebrows, and Dean could only grin all the wider for it. Cas should be proud; that was pretty much the same as the first time, right? Score one for sticking to the timeline.

"These are John Winchester's boys." Ellen came around the edge of the bar to join them a little more informally. She set the pretzels aside for later, wiping her hands on her daughter's apron, tied low around the young woman's waist. Jo gave her a scandalized glare, even as her mother nodded to each of the boys in turn and introduced them as Sam and Dean.

"It's nice to meet you." Sam was up and off the stool, extending his hand to her, which got him a look as sarcastically incredulous as they came. A real _'are you kidding me?'_ and Dean was gonna need a crowbar to unhinge his jaw if his smile got any bigger. He couldn't help it. Damn, he'd missed this little lady.

Jo shook the younger Winchester's hand anyway, that look morphing into a wicked grin that Sam just knew was making fun of him even more than the sarcastic one. When she turned that sharp look Dean's way, he just stuck to a little two-fingered salute and Jo went back to looking unimpressed. Amused, but oh-so unimpressed.

Right on timeline, then. Score numero dos.

"What do they want with Ash?" She directed the question at her mother, and Sam shot Dean a little look that had his brother rolling his eyes.

He knew that look. That was the look that said _'you didn't tell me she was exactly your type.'_ The one that was usually followed up by a wry little _'How 'friendly' is this friend of yours, huh, Dean?'_ The less-than-scandalized-no-matter-how-hard-he-argued-he-was little brother looking for blackmail and humiliation ammo because he had fallen behind by about ten years.

Dean just glared back.

Truth was, he could absolutely feel that stirring of long-buried emotion at the sight of her. Jo had been different. A hunter, so he hadn't had to worry about the problems he'd had with Cassie. A badass, both with a gun and a sharp-witted tongue, which had never failed to turn him on like no other. Not to mention she was gorgeous, in a rugged, hardened way that Dean appreciated almost more than soft skin and gentle curves. A warrior, through and through, with the kind of body he wanted to sweep right off the floor and pin to a wall, those strong thighs wrapped around him and blonde hair tangled in his fingers.

Despite the obvious attraction between them, though, it had just never…triggered. Never lined up right. Dean had deeply rooted affection for Jo, there was no denying that. It was a love of sorts, for sure, but not the kind that evolved into more. They'd sort of tried, on occasion, but they misfired every time, on or both of them. Always the wrong place, wrong time.

And after… Well, after, there had just been too much guilt. Regret for ever getting her or her mother involved in their lives, their problems. Terrible grief for the terrible end they met. Overwhelming shame that it should have been him in their place. That feeling of star-crossed lovers, never quite meeting up, had faded into a distant fondness instead of heat. A memory of love lost in that idealized way that softened hard edges and painted everything a little more rose-colored.

Now, though…. While Dean couldn't deny the return of many of those distant feelings, nor the swell of warmth and _family_ building within him at the mere sight of Jo giving him that wicked smile, he knew he couldn't, still. Even if he was back in the body of a youthful ( _translation: horny as all get out)_ twenty-seven year old, in mind and spirit and everything that really should count but absolutely didn't, Dean was almost pushing forty and he knew it. No matter the form he'd come back in, he was damn near twenty years older than Jo Harvelle now, and that was just…skeevy.

And Dean Winchester was not skeevy. It was a primary goal in Dean's life to never, ever have anything in common with witches, including adjectives. And _witches_ were skeevy. So nope. Nuh-uh. No way. Dean Winchester might not be classy, he sure as hell wasn't skeevy.

Which meant that, while he could grin and appreciate that second glance up and down his body Jo was currently giving him even as Ellen talked about their mutual mulleted MIT mutt, Dean could not pursue that avenue this time around with anything more than the fondness of a big brother or a badass buddy.

Admittedly, it was going to take a hell of talking-to to get his receptive, stupidly horny body on the same page as his forty-something, dating-twenty-year-olds-is-just-plain-wrong brain. He'd have to, uh, work on that.

Sam's kick to his shin brought him back to the conversation, only to find Jo now openly smirking at him and he cleared his throat. Ellen was staring at him expectantly. The motherly kind of expectant. The badass, boy-I-can-kill-you-with-that-container-of-pretzels-if-you-look-at-my-daughter-wrong-again kind of mother. Dean swallowed a little loudly and offered a weak grin.

"Think Ash will be able to make heads or tails of dad's research?" he asked, forcing that smile through and completely falling back on the beauty that was being from the future and knowing what conversations were likely about if only because he'd lived through them once before and not because he'd actually been listening.

More than covering his own ass and not getting on the receiving end of Ellen's terrifying ire, getting Ash on their dad's research again was a good idea. Even if Dean knew what the crazy dude would find and where it would lead. It would not only keep the timeline close to the original, but Ash had been able to track Azazel. That was something they should probably have on hand again, especially if they started running into changes in the timeline.

Of course, it had been that research that got Ash – and others at the Roadhouse – killed. Maybe this was one of those things they should be changing. And gee, wouldn't it be nice to have an expert in time travel – like an _angel_ – around to talk this over with. Dean fought down the urge to grumble and wallow about that, and instead decided, worst case, if it came down to it he could always warn Ellen and Ash about the Roadhouse attack closer to the actual date.

It was a compromise he wasn't thrilled about, but maybe it would satisfy the stupid timeline and its stupid having-to-stay-the-same stupidness.

Ellen's eyes stayed narrowed on him for only another moment before she offered a shrug. What Ash could and couldn't do was a mystery to all. The back door opened just then, admitting the one and only genius, in all his business up front, party in the back glory.

"What can I do for you, amigos?" he asked, sauntering up to the bar in what might be more leftover drunkenness than intentional swagger. Ellen reached over the bar to the soda hose, snagging a glass and filling it with something clear and bubbly – club soda? – then handed it back to Ash. He accepted it with a flourished brush of his long brown hair over one shoulder and an exaggerated wink in her direction.

Jo just rolled her eyes, hands back on her hips.

"We've got some research you might be interested in," Dean answered, glancing at Sam to see his younger brother following along with ease considering they hadn't exactly talked about this before coming here (his bad, he'd work on that too).

"What kind of 'research'?" The finger quotes were really less effective with just one hand, the other busy tipping the glass back as Ash drained almost the entire thing in one long go. The ladies looked amused. Dean remembered how crazy this guy was. Sam just stared. Ash lowered the glass with another head toss. "Ah. That's better. Thank you, mamacita."

"Call me that again and I'll dump the next one over your head," Ellen answered back easily enough, taking the glass from him and setting it back behind the bar.

"He could use the shower," Jo snorted from beside her mother and Ash favored her with a squished up face.

Sam cleared his throat, unsure if he should be getting them back on topic or not. "It's our dad's research. Weather patterns, crop and animal mutilation. Omens. He was tracking a demon with it. The…uh…" The brothers shared a look. "The one that killed out mom. And… and him."

Ash turned squinting eyes to the sasquatch, face screwed up in something like a raspberry, before he nodded and his features smoothed back out. This guy was crazy. "Condolences for your loss, my friend. Let's look at that research and see what you got."

Sam raised his eyebrows in surprise, but Dean was already up and off the stool, heading out to the Impala to grab the thick file that had gone into her trunk after they'd rebuilt her, along with anything else useful their father had on him or in his old pickup.

As he passed over the folder to a maybe-finally-sobering Ash, Dean repeatedly told himself (little good it did him) that he wasn't handing the man his death sentence.

-o-o-o-

Ash really was a genius, even more than Dean remembered. And just about as crazy, too, something Dean had sort of figured had become exaggerated in his memories over the years. But nope. Not so much. Dude was off his rocker, but he tackled their dad's research with the same gusto he had last time. First with amazement that anyone had tracked a demon this way with just a human brain and ridiculous amounts of research, and then excitement at the possibilities it presented when paired with his genius tech. He told them he'd have something in fifty one hours – which sounded familiar to Dean – and disappeared back through that door with his suped-up laptop.

They didn't need to hang around for his conclusion this time. Dean knew Ash would set up a brilliant tracker program for the omens and weather patterns his dad had been able to identify. However, he also knew that program wouldn't turn anything up immediately, and when it did the Roadhouse could just give them a call. So, as Ash disappeared into the back, muttering about non-parametrics, statistical overviews, and blah-blah-blah, Sam and Dean discussed their next move. They could return to Bobby's – check in on Angela – but, as Sam reminded him, they needed to get back on the road at some point. The family business called, as did Azazel's condition to Jess's safety, and Castiel had told them to stick as close to ordinary as possible, which meant hunting.

Speaking of hunts, Dean slid back onto the stool in front of Ellen, who had gone back to the chores of owning a bar, washing the counter down once Ash was busy with the Winchester's. Jo had been sent off to the store on a supply run, so Dean drummed his fingers along the wooden top until the bar owner spared him a look that said, clear as day, _'What do you want?'_

"You boys heading out?" she asked instead, though that look didn't diminish and Dean was back to grinning again. Damn, he'd missed the Harvelles.

"Soon. We figure Ash can call us if he finds anything." Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam, who wandered back over to them now that Ash had taken himself into seclusion. The older Winchester resisted making fun of how put out Sam had looked the minute their mulleted friend disappeared, taking his tech toys with him. "But first, there's something I gotta tell you, and you're not gonna believe me."

Both Ellen and his brother frowned at that, Sam glancing at him sidelong, trying to be subtle about it, and the bar owner outright staring.

"Because it's going to sound crazy," Dean continued, spreading his hands out in front of him on the bar. Sam came up beside him, now opening eyeing him with wariness – likely thinking he was about to drop the time traveling bomb – and Ellen just propped herself up on one arm, other hand securely at her hip in every mother's _Oh-here-we-go_ pose. "But in a month or two, I'm gonna be proven right."

Ellen huffed something of a laugh, eyebrow raised in that patented Harvelle skepticism. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Dean answered, trying and failing not to return the Harelle look with the Winchester smirk. It was instinctual. Couldn't be overridden. "See, this carnival is gonna come to town. May be a county or two over, but you'll hear about it. It'll have a clown."

At this point, Ellen wasn't managing to hide her amusement any better than Dean. He could practically see the snarky, _'Really, kid? A carnival with a_ clown _? You're shitting me.'_

Dean couldn't help but think, _'Hold onto your butts_ ,' in Samuel Jackson's voice, which then immediately switched over to a Jokered-up Heath Ledger because, _'Here…we…go.'_

(Plus, the whole, you know, _clown_ angle.)

"He's gonna kill some people."

Ellen's expression shifted almost immediately. First it was surprise – probably not the ending to that little story she'd been expecting – and then quickly suspicion, which was kind of valid. You didn't just tell a hunter that a hunt – a ridiculous hunt that no one had ever heard of before – was going to roll into town, and not include _how_ you knew that.

Sam, meanwhile, knew the _how_ and was busy standing ramrod straight, with eyes way too wide even as he fought to hide the obvious reaction. Dean would have busted out laughing at his poor, coulrophobic kid brother if Ellen wasn't right there with them and he was actually (mostly) serious about this.

"A killer clown?" the woman repeated, the skepticism on her face losing some of the sarcastic edge and falling more into incredulity. She wasn't sure if Dean was joking or not anymore, but she was probably hoping he was making it up. Hell, he knew Sam was sure as shit hoping for that.

"Yup. Killer clown."

Ellen was still regarding him uncertainly. "And how exactly do you know where it's gonna be?"

Dean opened his mouth and gave his most winning smile. "Because I'm psychic."

Beside him, Sam snorted in that way that suggested if he'd been drinking something just then, Dean would have been getting a shower.

"For real," he insisted as Ellen's thoughts clearly shifted towards this being a joke. One she wasn't particularly amused at as she eyed Sam, who was recovering. "Ask my brother."

She was, with intimidating mom eyes. And given the way that unamused look slid into unimpressed, she wasn't going for it.

"Oh," Sam breathed out once he could, you know, actually breathe again, "he's something, alright."

"Hey!" Dean sent a glare lacking any heat at the Samsquatch, and turned back to Ellen. "Don't listen to him; he's psychic too."

Sam was now eyeing him more than just warily, like he really wasn't sure they should be telling people this. It was one thing to play off Dean's future knowledge as a gift. Hunters used psychics all the time. But Sam's powers weren't natural; they came from the kind of source that a hunter would see as needing a shallow grave.

Dean didn't look worried though, still smiling at Ellen, who eyed the two of them warily now as well.

"If he's psychic, why didn't he know about the clown?"

Oh yeah, she'd noticed his little freak out as easily as Dean had, and Sam flushed a little. All six and a half feet of him fidgeting like a chastised child. He just didn't like clowns, alright? _Lots_ of people didn't like clowns. It was normal!

Despite Dean making fun of the kid (which he would not be stopping anytime soon), even the older Winchester could admit a fear of clowns wasn't entirely unhealthy. At least, not when considering that a killer one was about to roll into town. And they would run into at least two more murderous types again in the future. Including ones that exploded into glitter of all things. Yeah, that case had been _real_ fun.

"Oh, Sammy doesn't see the same stuff I see," Dean answered easily enough, having already prepared for all of this. He probably should have told his brother what that cover story would be, but he couldn't help it; the kids face when Dean mentioned the clown had been totally worth it.

The man from the future leaned into the bar, hunching his shoulders and maintaining a conspiratorial gaze with Ellen. She met him, play for play (still not sure this wasn't a joke), and leaned into the counter as well, as if the two were about to share some secret.

"He see's dead people," Dean whispered loudly. Beside him, Sam rolled his eyes. Well, at least if they were gonna spill that secret, of _course_ his brother would make a joke and a movie reference out of it in one breath.

Ellen didn't pull back, but she did send a quick glance Sam's way, still playing along, though it was obvious she still wasn't sure if this was all a joke or not. It looked like she was starting to realize it really wasn't.

"Don't we all," she said, leaning a little closer to whisper back, "They're called _ghosts_."

Oh, yeah. This was definitely where Jo got it from. Like mother like daughter for sure with these two.

Sam finally gave up, letting out a lengthy, resigned sigh. "I get death premonitions."

Ellen finally straightened back up, regarding the brother that seemed less likely to be pranking her. She'd suspected Dean wasn't kidding, but the kid didn't exactly help much with the conviction bit of it. But Sam… Sam wasn't joking. She could tell in the way he wasn't really meeting her eyes, but kept darting back to her, worried. He was self-conscious about this – and she could figure out why easily enough – and probably hadn't wanted to tell her. She glanced at Dean, wondering if the older Winchester had given his brother a choice in the matter.

"You're serious," she said, making sure to keep her voice even. She might be a hunter, but she wasn't particularly quick to judge that line that made up black and white. "You'd think John woulda mentioned you two were gifted."

Dean huffed. She didn't believe them, if that was her go-to response.

"Really?" Sam asked suddenly, finally staring at her. "You think John Winchester would admit to anyone, let alone a hunter, about his freak son?"

"You're not a freak." Dean bit it out so quickly, so damn fiercely, that it surprised all three of them. Dean dropped his eyes to the bar top, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from saying more. Not after he just told Ellen they were _both_ psychics, which should really mean they were both freaks.

Fuck, this probably wasn't going so well.

Sam's slip up with the singular form and not the plural might not have helped. Though, it wasn't untrue, either. Even if they went with this little play-pretend where Dean was psychic and more willing to embrace that 'gift' (he fucking wasn't, being from the future _sucked_ ), Sam, though… Sam had thought he was a freak. Still did, Dean realized with a dry throat and a spike of pain in his chest. Sam wasn't spinning some cover story. This was pure Sam Winchester. No lie, no story.

The worst part was, he wasn't wrong.

John Winchester never told anyone – even Dean – about Sam, about his powers or where they came from. He never would have said a word. Hadn't, even on his death bed, not really. No. John Winchester would have found a cure or he would have killed Sam himself. That's what John Winchester would have done, and Ellen, hard eyes trying to hide the emotion beneath – the one formed from personal experience of just what lengths John would go to – knew it too.

Her expression smoothed out, likely unable to stand in front of a kid clearly hurting so badly at his own father not understanding – not tolerating – what made him different. What made him special. As a mother – as a _damn good mother_ – Ellen couldn't stand for it, let alone indulge it.

"No one's calling anyone a freak," she offered, voice still carefully even, though she nodded once at Sam. The beanstalk of a Winchester almost sagged. He probably hadn't even realized how tense he had become. His fingers unfurled from fists he hadn't even known he was clenching. The tendons ached, and he flexed them outward. She watched him for a moment more as he visibly relaxed, her expression a carefully maintained neutrality. "Just surprised, is all. Hard to believe."

Dean cracked that Winchester smile out again. Surprise he could work with. "You don't gotta believe it. Just call us in a couple of months when a kill clown case shows up on your doorstep."

She still looked at him like he was crazy – that or he was absolutely terrible at practical joking – but the sound of a car door slamming out in the parking lot outside signaled the return of Jo, or a customer or hunter, and so the topic dropped.

-o-o-o-

Five and a half weeks later, a contact of Ellen's and a regular at the Roadhouse walked through the door with a manila folder in hand, red sharpie scribbled across the outside. He set it down on the bar, ordered a drink, got to talking, and eventually pushed it the bartender's way. Reading the scrawl across the top was enough to make Ellen's breath hitch in surprise, but the information inside had her actually shaking her head. There was a wry little smile on her lips that definitely made her contact look at her all sorts of funny as she stared down at a hunt that was anything but humorous.

"Son of a bitch. He was telling the truth," she muttered to herself, closing the file and all but looking heavenward to avoid rolling her eyes. "Unbelievable."

Saluting her contact with the folder and promising to have someone look into it, Ellen dug out her phone and went looking for Dean Winchester's number. When he picked up on the third ring, she couldn't have kept the smirk or the disbelief out of her voice if she'd tried.

"So. Psychic, huh?"

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-Asa Fox** : It has been my goal since season 12 came out to slot Asa Fox into this story, _alive, _somewhere. My original idea was the boys joining Bobby in attending a hunter's funeral for Garth with Asa being there. However, it didn't fit with the somber mode I had pegged (I thought about a deleted scene, but it would have been a long one and I haven't had the time). So I managed it here :) And yes, if this story had featured Season12!Dean and not Season11!Dean, he absolutely woulda pulled Asa to the side and told him to keep an eye on that 'best friend' of his._

 _ **-Ellen and Jo** : I know there wasn't much Jo in this chapter, but I'm working them into the story a lot like they worked them into the show. Slowly! Introductions first, and we'll go from there. I promise, we'll be seeing plenty of the Harvelles in the future :)_

 _ **-Update News:** Okay, so I have good news and bad news. Good news: next chapter is also a long one! Bad news: I am actually going back to my favorite internet-less vacation spot on only-the-most-beautiful-lake-in-da-world next week (which I snuck into this story a long time ago. Gave it a little cameo description when I realized the boys were actually going to drive right by it. Bonus points if anyone can spot it! Kinda stalkery bonus points actually... Hmmmm...). Anyhoo, in conclusion, I likely won't be able to post next weekend. Apologies once again and thank you for hanging with me and being patient!_

 _ **-Up Next:** Back to the good news. The next chapter is jam-packed with SO MUCH STUFF. Including, but not limited to, Chuck, the bunker key, our mystery green-eyed woman, demon blood, Azazel being a creepy mcCreeper, poor Sammy getting the exact opposite of a feel-good dream visit from his guardian demon, and a FREE TOASTER!_

 _…Okay, the toaster may have been an exaggeration (aren't they always)._

 _ **-Reviews** : Alright guys. I know the two week delay is going to suck (again) but please drop a line anyway! I prefer to warn you when delays are coming rather than you guys not know why an update didn't happen, but I also know it hurts reviews, and I do love reviews, as you all well know by now. Hearing from you guys makes me all warm and fuzzy like having a little chest!Cas of my own. So bring on those fuzzy-warm-girly-hair-braiding-slumber-party-emotions-that-aren't-quite-mine-but-definitely-make-me-feel-good-and-are-possibly-homo-erotic-but-lets-not-get-into-that!_

 _…Wait, what? I think I lost my point somewhere in there…_


	53. Season 2: Chapter 20

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 ** _-Early_ _Post!_** _Yeeeah, that's right, I couldn't handle another two week gap either so I'm posting super early before I go off on my trip. I can't help it; I'm excited about this chapter. It's jam packed with lots of not-niceness (my favorite! Say it with me: No good...dirty rotten...)_

 _ **-Reviews**_ _: I have not had time to answer reviews or most PMs in about three chapters now, and I am so sorry for that. I'll be trying to catch up in the next week or so. Feel free to bug me further if you feel I've forgotten you. I really do enjoy talking with you guys, so pester me all you want until I reply._

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** There's so much going on in this chapter. Bobby and the boys are back together, the former proves he's a badass researcher, the latter's looking for a case and making coffee, Bobby's finding (and losing) things that shouldn't even exist, Chuck's cursing Singers now too, and Sam's having a little trouble sleeping. Oh. And maybe Cas shows up? So. Much. Happening._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 20

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

In the six weeks it took Ellen's contact to walk into the Roadhouse, the boy's got back on the road and tackled several hunts, most of them mundane. They started by returning to Bobby's; they'd left pretty abruptly with some of their less necessary gear still back at the older hunter's house, and, oh yeah, a braindead human being that was their responsibility.

Bobby greeted them with his usual raised brows and gruff that each of the Winchester boys could read easily enough as a _'welcome home'_ of sorts. They'd kept him at least somewhat up to date on the Elkins case, but had neglected to call about the Roadhouse or Ellen. They filled him in while they ate burgers that the boys had picked up on their way in. The older hunter hadn't been up to much. Checked in on their girl a couple of times, kept up the search for their mystery green-eyed woman, and ran research and interference for a few hunters. For now, it seemed quiet on the apocalypse front, which Dean wasn't all that surprised about.

He knew they had roughly a year until the next big crisis. Since that crisis was Sam's death, just thinking about it turned the delicious burger in his mouth to ash and dread. Dean swallowed it down forcefully and shoved the thoughts away. They had a year to figure it out.

Both Dean and Sam checked in on Angela, who was breathing away, oblivious to the world (or so they hoped. They hadn't actually asked Cas what would happen to the woman's soul back in that comatose state. Hopefully she wasn't just trapped in there, aware but unable to move. When Dean first threw the question out there, a nervous little laugh tacked on to the end as he stared at Sam for answers the kid didn't have, it bothered the kindhearted Winchester. It bothered him enough that over the course of the day he found himself sitting bedside by the braindead woman, reading his research on Canaanite culture aloud, just in case she was in there and could hear them. When Dean caught him doing it, standing in the doorway staring with something a little sad and a lot unfortunate painted across his face, neither of them said a word.

The next morning, Dean stopped in again to check on her (he'd actually checked in the middle of the night too. Housing a body on a ventilator was creepy. And nerve-wracking). He awkwardly said good morning to the unconscious woman, then fumbled because that just felt damn weird to say to an otherwise empty room. His recovery – stumbling through some sort of something (and yeah, looking back, he had no idea what he said) – didn't go much better, leading to him lingering for just a little too long to watch her chest rise and fall with residual anxiety. Eventually he left the room, feeling both paranoid and like a voyeuristic creep.

Awesome, just what he needed. Being responsible for a human's life with zero to little control over the thing keeping that human alive was friggin' stressful. And sucked.

Dean headed back downstairs for some grub and coffee, scrubbing at his face and deciding that those feelings, like all the others, could be dealt with later. Sam was already down there (morning people, man. They were the real freaks), flipping through the newspaper with his laptop, a couple open books, and an empty plate spread around him. There was half eaten bagel with a (pathetically) light spread of cream cheese in his hand. Knowing Sam, it hadn't actually made it to his mouth anytime in the last fifteen minutes. God, it made Dean's eyes hurt just to look at; that was way too much research way too early in the morning on way too little sustenance.

"Find us a case?" he asked as he crossed the kitchen with one goal in mind: coffee. He reached the life-giving pot of steaming, liquid gold and rooted around in Bobby's upper cabinets for a mug. He gestured Sam's way once he found one, but the kid shook his head, setting what was left of his breakfast back on the plate and lifting a glass of orange juice for a sip instead. (A morning person with _juice_. His brother was beyond saving, now.)

"A couple potentials," he answered when he was done with the OJ. The kid lowered the newspaper to lie across the table, a few articles, most of them small, circled in red sharpie, like he was job hunting. In a way, Dean figured they were. "A language professor at Princeton went missing from his office. Turned up in Wyoming a week later, dead."

"Our kinda thing?"

"Maybe," Sam offered with a shrug of his ridiculously broad shoulders. "The death was pretty nasty."

Dean leaned over his brother's shoulder while pouring the contents of the coffee pot into his mug to look at the circled article, a little larger than the others, complete with a picture of the guy. He looked normal enough. Pretty stereotypical higher-education professor with large circular glasses, an ugly sweater, and greying hair. The death could have been something supernatural – one of the larger quotes on the page said the wife was adamant it was foul play – but it wouldn't be the first time the boys had run into some old dude tired of his lady, sneaking off cleverly to find some younger, hotter piece. Those types usually weren't far off from a violent death, either by a pissed off boyfriend or brother, or a vengeful wife.

"How nasty?"

Sam cleared his throat, an awkward, tight-lipped smile on his face that Dean knew well. Okay, apparently _really_ nasty. "They, uh, found his tongue shoved where the 'sun don't shine.'"

Dean pulled his head back with a scrunched up face. It was pretty much the same face Sam had made when he'd first read it. "Aw, ew, man. Come on, I haven't even had coffee yet."

"You asked."

"They put that in the newspaper?" Dean did a full body shiver and made another face, trying to wash the image out of his mind with scolding hot coffee. It…sort of worked. Okay, not really.

"God no," Sam chuckled, shaking his head. "The article was missing just enough of the right words. So I hacked the coroner's office for the report. It's uh… It's not pretty."

Dean leaned over his brother's shoulder again – already knowing he shouldn't, brain yelling at him not to, but curiosity was a bitch – and made another gagging sound at the picture on the kid's screen, a report next to it. "Jesus. You were eating looking at that?!"

Sam just rolled his eyes and minimized the photo (like it had been for most of the morning and certainly his entire meal, thank you very much). "It may not be our kind of case. The kill was excessive, but nothing else suggests supernatural involvement."

The disappearance was the most intriguing part of the case, and the only part weird enough for them to even look into it. Security cameras on campus showed Dr. Charles Mann entering his office at 8:12pm last Thursday, a room on the fifth floor of the language building with only the one door and no fire escape. The man never came back out and his wife reported him missing the following morning. But there could be plenty of normal explanations for that, too. Not to mention, a week was more than enough time to end up halfway across the country and there were a million ways someone sneaking away from his family could get end up murdered. Plus, a language professor with his tongue… uh, well, cut off, sounded like a message. Those usually came from revenge-driven people, not monsters.

Dean was idly thinking of the first time they'd run into Loki. That sounded like his sort of just desserts, and it had been a college campus the first time they'd bumped into him. But Dean was pretty sure that was the wrong tree for barking. Loki wasn't usually violent. Well, that wasn't really true, Dean thought with a slight wince. Sam's nuts would certainly disagree, as would Cas's face from wherever Gabe had sent him in that nightmare TV Land. And murdering a professor by pushing him out a window on the top floor of a school building had been what first drew them to Loki's playground.

Crap.

The man from the future took another look at the professor's photo. Honestly, it probably wasn't Gabriel. That death was really excessive, and not exactly in the category of trickster behavior. And yeah, Dean may be hedging, but truth was, if it wasLoki, they should probably run the exact opposite direction anyway. Gabriel was going to be nothing but trouble for them until they could convince him to join their side, and Dean had no idea how he was going to do that this time around.

Until he did, he'd really rather not spend a couple hundred Tuesdays dying.

"Could be a normal psycho," Dean offered instead. They'd run into their fair share of normal, murderous psychopaths and serial killers in their time as hunters, after all. Or, at least, they would.

"Sure," Sam supposed. "As normal as a psycho can be."

His brother snorted and went back to his coffee and cooking up what sounded like eggs and bacon. "What else you got?"

Sam listed off a couple more, including what was probably a ghost in Iowa that sparked a flicker of déjà vu for Dean. He said as much and Sam agreed it was worth checking out. The college dude's death didn't sound familiar – Dean definitely would have remembered details like that – and if it was Loki, then they weren't going anyway.

So they agreed to head east to check out a potential ghost. Dean didn't mention Loki, since he was pretty sure it wasn't him, and Sam seemed agreeable enough to let the professor case go so Dean didn't have to. As he was mentally routing out the quickest drive and Sam folded up the newspaper, Bobby came in from the study, where he'd been sprawled out at his desk nose deep in about six different books of his own, feet propped up and coffee cup almost empty.

He tossed one of those books on the table in front of Sam, mug in hand, and kept moving further into the kitchen for the last of the brew. Dean raised his eyebrows at his brother, even as Sam picked up the heavy book. All it took was a single passage – the layout of only one page – for Sam to recognize what he was reading. The kid cast an incredulous look over his shoulder at Bobby, who'd turned back their way as he stirred up the sugar cube he'd dropped into the black, steaming liquid. When the hunter's expression remained neutral – not a joke – Sam looked back at the King James Bible he was holding.

Dean, curious what the two of them were going on about silently, leaned over his brother's shoulder. His eyebrows went straight up at the passage the book was open to. "Sodom and Gomorrah? Aren't they those two sin cities that God sank?"

"That they are," Bobby confirmed. "He sacked five of 'em in all, or so the story goes, but those two were the most well-known and largest." The older hunter turned a pointed look Sam's way. "Gomorrah had a large temple at the city's edge. On a hill. Overlooking the rest of the city, at least according to a couple accounts."

"You're kidding." Sam stared at the words on the page, realizing what Bobby was getting at. There was no way he'd been in a Ziggurat in the destroyed city of Gomorrah with Azazel and that woman. That would be… incredible. And make no sense.

"That was my opinion too," Bobby offered dryly, sipping on his coffee.

"What are we talking about?" Dean asked, glancing between father figure and brother, definitely not sure what they were discussing. They might as well have been speaking tongues for all he was getting.

"The city from my vision," his brother explained. "The one with the green-eyed woman. Bobby and I have been trying to find it."

"And…" Dean looked between the two of them again, expression growing more and more skeptical, not to mention incredulous. "You think it's _Sodom_ and _Gomorrah_?"

Sam shrugged because, _no_ , not really. What would Azazel be doing in a city burned to the ground by God? Or…burned into the ground, if that dark, cavernous space he'd been in was what was left. Still, what would some strange, supernatural creature be doing in a tomb in an ancient, destroyed town? What proof did they have, except a possible Ziggurat Sam might have been inside and the right area for the language that he'd seen on those tombs?

"More than a man and his family…" Sam muttered, staring at the Bible passage but mind back in that stone grave with those green eyes and tangled hair.

"What's that?"

Sam looked up at Bobby and his expression – part amazement and part dread caused by the two-plus-two equation his mind was busy solving – wasn't exactly encouraging. "Something she said. More in the city deserved to be saved than just one man and his family."

Bobby's eyes widened a bit, but Dean was back to looking completely lost again. The older hunter rubbed at his beard, thinking. "Lot and his daughters were pretty famously smuggled out of Sodom by angels right before they sacked it. The only 'righteous' man they could find in all five cities."

Dean was looking back and forth between them again like a tennis match. One incredulous tennis match. "So…what? Azazel went and found the remains of two of the most famously destroyed cities in _the Bible_ , and raised…. Some super demon who was in the city when God sacked it?"

"I don't know…" Sam looked pretty uncertain of that himself, shrugging a little helplessly and a little self-consciously. It had been his dream after all, and his name the woman mentioned. And him Azazel was after. "He- Azazel, I mean, said she was some sort of guide to lost children. And she was angry about the loss of life."

"Doesn't sound like a demon," Bobby offered, though the information was hardly helpful, putting them back at square one. Not that they'd even been at square two yet, by any account.

If anything, Dean looked even more befuddled. "What the hell would Azazel be digging up some bleeding heart for?"

Sam bit back his most immediate response, which was that the woman had hardly fit that description. Not with the anger she'd radiated, the violence in her stance and bitterness in her words, or those fierce, terrifying green eyes Sam had seen just before he'd been violently shoved out of the vision. He shivered, but said nothing. No. Bleeding heart definitely wasn't the right phrase.

"I'll keep digging into the lore," Bobby said, hand moving up from his beard to pull off his baseball cap and resettle it on his head again absently. He was busy working through the problem with a brain just flat out wasted on auto repair. "The cities were primarily pagan – one of the reasons they weren't redeemable according to the Bible. Some of the Canaanites worshiped Egyptian gods, and Mesopotamia wasn't that far away. It's got a pantheon all its own. Who knows, maybe one of 'ems got a deity for kids who got caught up in God's spring cleaning."

Sam nodded almost absently, still thinking back to his vision. But he'd been over it a dozen times, and the details were already starting to fade. He wasn't going to find any new clues there.

"I can ask Cas next time he checks in," Dean offered, a little one shouldered shrug pairing nicely with how ultimately unhelpful the offer felt and sounded. "See if he knows anything about it."

"She." Both brother and father figure corrected at the same time, causing Dean to roll his eyes while trying to maintain a deadpan expression, which really didn't work out all that great in his favor or as a defense.

"Whatever."

-o-o-o-

The boys were back on the road by lunch that day. They did one last check-up on Angela, who was still steady and stable and breathing away, packed their bags, and said their farewells to Bobby. They were leaving him John's truck to do with as he pleased (most likely to keep on backup as a second running vehicle with a decent load capacity, great for a hunter) and Dean's stolen Ford Pinto, which he'd likely strip for parts just as soon as he had the time.

It was nine days, actually, before Bobby found a spare day on his hands that didn't have him driving off for a case or running his garage for actual money to pay the bills, or researching this or that for other hunters in need. When he did finally break down the Pinto, he didn't get very far into it before he found a small wooden box in the front seat, under the footwell where it wasn't easy to spot.

The old hunter stared at it, turned it about, curious of the irregular star symbol carved on the front. Settling against the edge of the passenger seat, already having been crouching in order to clean out the footwells, Bobby slid open the wooden lid warily. There was a key inside, old looking design, with the same elongated star in the center of its oval head.

Bobby eased it out of the box – cautious of any traps because the thing just screamed supernatural artifact – and flipped it over. There didn't seem to be anything more to the key than the star. Same with the box, which turned out to be empty and without inscription or clue as to its purpose.

"Huh," he mumbled, laying the old key back into the box as equally cautiously as he had removed it and sliding closed the lid. Either it was a trinket from the previous owner of the car – doubtful, given the rundown state of it and the other odds and ends Bobby had found so far – or Sam and Dean hadn't seen it in the footwell and left it behind. He tucked the box into his pocket and made a mental note to call the boys about it.

Four hours later and well into the breakdown of the Pinto, Bobby went back into the house for a well-earned beer and a late lunch. He pulled the box out of his pocket and left it sitting on his desk, so he wouldn't forget about it.

Of course, back-to-back calls from both Bucky Sims and Steven Wandell, not even halfway through his sandwich, with one needing to know how to get a chupacabra out of a fox's burrow that went deep ( _'I'm talking more than arm's length here, Bobby. The sucker is really in there. Don't even know how he got his chubby ass in that far.'_ ) and the other in pretty dire straits and likely needing backup in the Maine area for an unidentified monster that had already added three additional people to the death toll since Steven had gotten there, meant that by that evening, Bobby was exhausted, in need of a drink, and his desk had enough new books and papers cluttered atop it that the box and it's mysterious key were buried and forgotten.

Another couple of days would pass before Bobby had to hastily sweep the more incriminating – or at least brow-raising – objects on the desk into multiple drawers by the armful before he let in Sheriff Mills, who was knocking pretty insistently on his front door and hollering, more good-naturedly than demandingly, that she knew he was in there and they needed to talk about reports of stolen vehicles on his property.

After all that – with Bobby easily talking his way out of the good Sheriff's suspicions (or, at least, out of a ticket or handcuffs) – it would be months before anyone remembered or found that special key, buried in one of Bobby Singer's desk drawers.

-o-o-o-

This time, Chuck – or, really, God at that point – hit his forehead against his desk multiple times. Un-freaking-believable. Winchesters. Winchesters _and_ Singers.

Chuck stood, closed the lid of his laptop with a shake of his head, and decided he needed a break. A nice break. Maybe he'd go have himself a long dinner at that diner he liked. The one with the waitress who smiled prettily at him. Chuck liked her.

He pushed away from his desk and computer, abandoning the story for the time being, and pulled on a pair of jeans over his two-day old boxers (three day old? Maybe he should do some laundry soon…). Chuck grabbed his house keys and pathetically light wallet, slid some sandals onto his feet that had seen better days, and left his house and the Winchester Gospels behind.

-o-o-o-

Sam knew he was dreaming. The awareness was instantaneous the moment he opened his eyes, just like the swell of warmth in his chest at the site of Jess, asleep, face inches away from his. She breathed soft and deep, her hair moving with each exhale. A strand tickled Sam's nose and he slid his hand up the length of mattress to rub at the offending appendage as discretely as possible.

With a smile more nostalgic than loving, as sad as that may be, Sam reached between them and tucked that strand of hair behind her ear. He took the moment, since none of this was real anyway, and carded his fingers through her hair. Jess hummed lightly, a small smile starting in the corner of her mouth. Beautiful blue-green eyes slid open, crinkling at the corners to match that smile, and she stared at Sam in the dim light of their Palo Alto apartment.

"Hey, you," she whispered in the quiet night, shifting her head against the pillow to undo the hair he'd so neatly tucked back. He grinned across form her, shifting himself forward another inch as well.

"Hey," he answered back, content in this moment, however contrived it might be, to just be with her. There was something oddly comfortable about them, like this. The need – the ache – for this to be real, for him to be able to touch her – really touch her – wasn't nearly as sharp as he expected. He still missed her. God, did he miss her, but there was also relief that her absence from his life was no longer that sharp ache or the slow, miserable pull that it had been.

"How's the new semester?" Sam asked, if for no other reason than to play along with the wishful dream his brain had offered him tonight. He knew any answer she gave would be conceived entirely by his own mind. Still, it was nice to pretend, if only for a few minutes.

"Boring." She scrunched up her face in distaste – it was far more adorable than it was anything else – and he laughed. She resettled her head against the pillows, eyes opening and smiling playing across her lips. The strands of her hair were once again spread all over the pillow, tickling Sam's face. "Would be better if you were there."

The pang that echoed through him at her words was distant, more guilt than actual longing. He didn't want to go back to school. Not really. It was a realization he'd only recently embraced: only truly in the days following his father's death. Acknowledging that it wasn't the life John had wanted for him, Sam figured – in and among his grief and regrets – that he should honor at least one of his father's wishes. More than that, though, he didn't know how he possibly could return to school. Even if he and his brother ended the plan for the apocalypse tomorrow, something that seemed unlikely (to put it lightly), returning to Jess and his previous life… Well. He'd been lying to himself when he dreamed he could ever have a white picket fence and a dog. That life was gone now. Sam was content knowing Jess would still have it, if that's what she wanted. He was grateful that being with him hadn't cost the woman he loved her life, her future. And he could be content with the rest.

"Be careful what you wish for," he said jokingly, knowing that excitement was just about the last thing the real Jessica Moore wanted out of life right now. Good old boring school was exactly what she needed to get her feet back under her. Mundane. Safe. Normal. "Did you go get that coffee with Brady?"

He didn't know why he asked it. Part of him didn't want to know. But part of him did. Part of him knew he'd ask it in the real world, so why not test run it here. It was the bigger part of him, actually, which he was happy to realize. He wanted Jess and his best friend – even if that best friend had been a lie for two years – to be happy. Even if that happiness was found in each other.

Jess had told him the last time they'd talked that Brady asked her out for a coffee. Fumbled it quite spectacularly, actually. The two had met back up almost three months ago, bumping into each other on campus, much to Jess's surprise. She never thought he'd be back at school so soon. Maybe rightly so.

Brady had been a…disaster. Back at school because he couldn't tell his family about anything that had happened. Couldn't face his parents as a drop-out or even tell them he was taking a break. They wouldn't understand why and they had always pressured him in school. He was at least seeing a psychiatrist, but had to lie about almost everything they talked about. Meeting up with Jess, as awkward as that first encounter had been post-possession, had probably saved his life. For a second time, really. She'd given him the contact information for the same woman Bobby had sent the Moore family's way, and Brady finally had someone – two someones – to talk to about what had happened to him.

So, a few months later, Sam wasn't that surprised that the real Brady stumbled through a quiet request for a coffee. As maybe more than friends. He also wasn't that upset about it, either, surprising even himself. Sam felt fairly neutral about it, like hearing good new coming from a friend who's life didn't much impact you – which was perhaps the part that truly stung – but whom you were still happy to hear from. Sam didn't know if it would last; the two of them would be building a relationship largely on shared trauma. That could go either way, for either of them. But if nothing else, Sam was grateful that they had each other, in whatever capacity they decided.

Jess had seemed less sure. Not quite ready for a relationship (it had only been half a year since 'losing' the man she'd pretty much planned on spending the rest of her life with), uncertain about dating her ex-boyfriend's ex-possessed best friend, even if she was growing quite close to him, and unsure if she should even be telling any of this to Sam. He appreciated it, though. For the peace of mind it brought him, for the trust she still had in him despite everything he'd put her through, and because he still cared for her deeply and he'd meant it when he said he was there for her, no matter what.

So he'd stuck to his guns about that last bit and told her to go for it. Meet Brady for coffee and perhaps the opportunity for more. Be honest with him about maybe not being ready. And let whatever happens from there on out happen. It wasn't as hard to say as he thought it would be. The truth was, Sam knew what he had with Jess was over the minute his brother woke up in a car outside of Jericho ten years in the past. He didn't want her to put her life on hold waiting for a man who would never come home.

She'd told him he was absolutely terrible at relationship advice, and he'd just laughed, happy to hear the relief in her voice.

"Not yet," Dream Jess finally answered, her smile souring just a little. Sam wondered if it would do that for real, or if he was putting it there all on his own. "I chickened out."

"You still should," Sam insisted, voice dropping to the softest of levels; a conversation meant only for the two of them. Not that there was anyone else in his head to hear them. "It could be good."

"It could be terrible," she countered immediately, but there was still that twitch of a smile on her lips. He reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear once more, pulling the strands away from his own tickled skin. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. "I don't understand why, Sam."

"Why what?"

He pulled his arm back, settling it on the crisp white sheets between them, painted blue in the darkness of the room and the slivers of moonlight peeping through the corners and slats of their blinds. She opened her eyes in the absence of his touch.

"Why you don't want me anymore."

The words alone were painful. No longer the punch to the gut they once would have been, but still a vice around his heart, squeezing until his chest ached and there wasn't much room left. Yes, the words hurt, but it was Jess's eyes that had Sam scrambling away from her, staggering off the bed. His breath caught in his throat, his pulse skyrocketed through his veins, and horror-fueled adrenaline flooded his system.

Her eyes were glowing a brilliant, unnatural green.

Jess sat up on the bed as he clambered away from her and to his feet. The sheet slid off her pale skin and nightgown to pool in her lap. Those wrong eyes were wide with concern. "What's wrong, Sam?"

It was still Jess's voice. Still her expression of worry and confusion and a touch of hurt. But those weren't her eyes and Sam was suddenly certain this bittersweet dream had taken a nightmarish turn.

"Yeah, _Sammy-boy_ , what's wrong?"

The voice called from behind him, sending chills down his spine and aligning each of his vertebra with rigidity built from hatred and fear. Sam spun around, fists already clenched hard enough to hurt, even in this dream world that was suddenly far too real. Azazel stood just inside the door of their bedroom, leaning against the frame with crossed arms and a lazy, amused smile painted across his face.

"You," Sam bit out, as much a growl as it was an accusation.

"Me." The demon spread his arms wide, that grin turning to a smirk.

"Get out of my head!" the hunter yelled, putting himself between Azazel and the bed he once shared with Jess. Not that he needed to shield her; none of this was real. He couldn't hurt her here. It didn't matter; Sam knew he could not watch this murderer hurt any version of the woman he still loved, real or not. Wrong eyes or not. But even as he looked over his shoulder, he was surprised to find the bed empty. The sheets were still pooled Jess had been.

He whipped his gaze back to Azazel, who merely shrugged.

"Like you said, Sam, we're in your head. That big, powerful brain of yours that can do so much more than you know." The demon pushed off the door and started towards him. Sam scrambled back step for step. He should have stood his ground, he knew, but there wasn't an inch of this demon – of what he could do, or what he could make Sam do – that didn't terrify him. "You don't have to hide her from me, of course. We have a deal, sport. As long as you keep up your end, she's safe. Well, from me at least."

Sam's fingers bit into his palms hard enough to almost bleed. He backed his grip off only after a spike of fear pierced through him and he realized that drawing blood into this sickening dream, with Azazel right in front of him, was a terrifying and horrible idea. He didn't want that coppery scent anywhere near this nightmare. Azazel's eyes darted down to his hands, like he _knew_ – maybe he did – and Sam took another step back, almost to the nightstand now.

"So long as you don't change the rules, right?" The biting words were pure venom, rage and terror fueling the hunter as he took that final step, the back of his thigh hitting the lip of the small table.

The demon flashed his teeth like yellow fangs in the dim light of the room. "Ah, you got me there, kiddo. I probably would if I could, I won't lie. Picking a crossroads demon was smart of you, Sammy. Or was that your brother's idea?"

Azazel side-eyed him, eyebrows raised suggestively. Sam didn't take the bait, and Azazel eventually continued, "Crowley made a contract and everything. And as much as I could care less if he dies, he was very thorough with the loopholes and I can't have your life forfeited before the big showdown."

As the demon spoke, Sam managed to wedge his hand into the drawer of the nightstand, the movement hidden behind his broad back, and he sought out the gun he used to keep strapped to the underside of the tabletop. Even out of the life for four years, Sam hadn't been able to let go of his training.

He pulled the weapon, cocking the hammer and firing directly in Azazel's direction with zero hesitation. The demon didn't move, but his body did jerk with the bullet that slammed into his torso. Yellow eyes glanced down at the little hole and the growing circle of blood on his shirt. With a sardonic twitch of his lip and a raised brow, the demon raised his head to regard the hunter almost passively.

"Can't kill me with that, Sammy. Even in a dream." Azazel tilted his head, expression turning thoughtful, with a malicious little tilt to his smile. "Well, not yet. But a few more lessons with me…"

Sam shot him seven more times, emptying the clip into the demon's chest and head. He aimed the last one right at the bastard's groin, just because, and snapped, "It's cathartic."

God, did he wish he could kill him for real. Dean had told him how and when it would happen; that they had to wait for him to show back up at the Hellgate with the Colt. Sammy could wait till then, but it didn't stop him from (literally) killing the bastard in his dreams. Azazel had all but destroyed his family and ruined his life. First taking his mother from him, then his father (this time right out from under him, knocking him out in that boiler room. His dad had been right there. He'd been _right there_ , damnit!) and ultimately destroying any chance at a future with the woman he loved.

He reached into the nightstand, ejected the spent clip, reloaded with the spare he kept in there, and emptied that one into Azazel too. It didn't do anything other than amuse the demon, of course, but Sam hadn't been spouting just words. It _was_ a release of sorts, even if it wasn't nearly enough of one. Only killing the bastard for real would be, he figured.

"Ya done yet, sport?"

Sam was out of ammo, so he lowered the gun to his side. It took more energy than he cared to admit not to chuck the spent weapon at the demon's head like a child. Biting the inside of his cheek, he spat out, "I want my father back, you son of a bitch."

The demon's smirk grew into a vicious grin. "In exchange for what?"

The young hunter faltered, anger bleeding out in sudden surprise, because the demand had been…childish. Needy. Hurting. Not necessarily serious. Sam's breath hitched in his throat at the idea that he could bring John back.

"Tit for tat, Sammy-boy," Azazel continued, that grin all the worse as it turned knowing. "That's the way the world works. Tell you what. How 'bout…we get you get back on schedule, and I'll give you daddy Winchester."

The demon reached behind his back and withdrew a jar of demon blood, held in his open palm like a sick peace offering.

"He could probably use a break from the rack right about now," Azazel added, bouncing that glass playfully in his hand, the red sloshing along the sides.

Sam visibly paled and slammed his eyes shut, against the blood or the demon's words, he didn't really know. It didn't really matter and it was too late anyway. They were both there, and he was suddenly so certain he could _smell_ the blood. His stomach cramped and folded in on itself. His brain begged for it, for an end to the memory of a thirst that robbed him of his ability to swallow, for the _power_ that relief promised. His veins were suddenly dry and shriveled and _hurt_ throughout his body. Sam clamped a shaking hand over one wrist; the pain radiating up his arm was almost enough to make him cry out.

The hunter spun away from that jar and the terrible truth. He clenched his teeth against the pain and the hunger.

 _This is a dream. This is a dream. This is_ my _dream._

He repeated it again and again in a mantra of desperation.

"It may be your dream, slugger, but that doesn't make _me_ any less real." Azazel's voice came from right in front him ( _Impossible_. He had turned into the nightstand. There wasn't room. This wasn't real. _He_ wasn't real). When he opened his eyes, Sam scrambled back with a gasp. Those pale yellow irises were just inches from his, and that damn jar of crimson pressed between their bodies.

Sam bolted backward, putting himself wide open in the center of the room (vulnerable, indefensible, _stupid_ ) but all he could focus on was getting away from that blood. He couldn't take it – couldn't accept it or even look at it – no matter what. No matter _what_ Azazel threatened him with. He _couldn't_.

"I'm not taking that stuff ever again," he declared loudly and firmly, voice impressively steady for how much the rest of him shook.

"But think of the things you could do on it!" Azazel matched his movement into the center of the room at a much slower pace: a predator who knew his prey had nowhere to go. He could take all the time in the world and he would still get his prize.

Sam swallowed roughly, having never felt as helpless as he did right then.

"You were strong, kiddo. Maybe not strong enough to kill me, but you could be." Azazel stopped, giving the hunter a few feet of space that Sam knew was entirely of the demon's decision. Sam had no power here and he knew it. Azazel knew it too. There was nothing he could do, nowhere he could run that the bastard couldn't follow, couldn't find him and force that blood down his throat.

Azazel didn't seem to notice that his prey was almost hyperventilating. "Hell, you let me train you up – let me _bulk_ you up-" the demon hefted the jar again for emphasis- "and I'll stand here and _let_ you kill me."

The demon was grinning, like the idea of it was his greatest dream, his greatest achievement, and Sam thought he must be crazy. But then again, this was the demon who spent decades making deals for infants, who killed dozens, maybe even hundreds, and ruined so many lives in his pursuit of releasing Lucifer. Sam doubted sanity really factored into that equation.

No, Azazel was a fanatic. Those types would readily offer up their life if it meant their goal was achieved in the process. A goal of pumping Sammy up on enough demon blood that he was strong enough to contain Lucifer while he destroyed the world. But that was only after being so addicted to the substance that Sam would be easy to manipulate and tricked into releasing the Devil in the first place.

Sam's tenacity grew. His resolve strengthened. He would not be that puppet. The hunter clenched his hands and forced them to stop shaking. He raised his eyes and refused to look at that jar again. He breathed through his mouth and erased that copper smell of it from his memory.

"It's. Not. Happening _._ "

Azazel's glee dampened. That open, friendly demeanor, crazy as it had been, slunk off his form and left something dark and ugly and _dangerous_ in its place. His grin faded, turned right upside down, and he tossed the jar of blood onto the bed beside him. It sloshed and bounced as it rolled on the mattress. Sam swallowed hard and refused to look at it.

"Now, kiddo, I've got a schedule to keep," the demon began, his tone one of warning, in the realm of a parent quickly losing patience. He rolled the sleeves of his flannel up to his elbows as he spoke, and Sam got the distinct impression of a father about to beat obedience into his child. "You can help me with that, or I can force it down your throat. Either way you wanna play it, you're gettin' that next dose."

Sam couldn't stop his body as it resumed its trembling, but he tilted his chin up, jaw clenched, and stood his ground.

Azazel sighed again, this time in a mockery of disappointment. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. "You know, Sam… you pulled through that last little withdrawal by the skin of your teeth." The demon dropped his arm and raised his head, yellow eyes locking on hazel with dangerous intent. "I think we both know you won't survive a second round."

That hard stare lasted the length of a single breath – just long enough for dread to pool in Sam's stomach like cement – and then the demon was on him. Sam was sure he hadn't blinked, hadn't taken his eyes off the bastard, but one moment Azazel was beside the bed and the next he was in Sam's face. Their chests nearly pressed together, one hand clamped painfully tight around the back of the hunter's neck. That hand pulled him forward, towards those terrible eyes, as much as it kept him from rearing away.

Sam brought his arm up on instinct – elbow aiming for the demon's face, forearm aiming for the hand around his neck to break the grip there – but Azazel was too fast. Too strong. He caught Sam's arm in his second hand, fingers tight enough to bruise, grip hard enough to make bones creak. The hunter hissed under the pressure, biting back a cry. He faltered in his defense, knowing he was beat even as his free hand wrapped around that wrist holding his neck in a flimsy attempt to keep the demon from pulling him any closer.

Demons didn't have weaknesses. Not like humans. No pressure points to pinch or press. Sam could dislocate that thumb pushing into the vulnerable, soft spot just beneath his ear and Azazel wouldn't even flinch. The part of Sam's brain that ran on instinct and survival chided him for his foolishness. For believing that bravery was ever going to see him through this unharmed.

Unbidden, against everything he was still trying to fight for, Sam's eyes slid to that jar of blood, abandoned on the bed. In that moment he knew, with petrifying clarity, that Azazel was playing games. Taunting him. Warning him. Showing exactly how little control he had in this and in everything to come. The demon was a kid with a magnifying glass directing an ant – _little Sammy-boy_ – wherever he wanted. The threat of heat and agonizing pain was just on the horizon if he didn't comply. Azazel could so easily point him towards that blood – towards addiction and power and the utter surrender of all sanity – and there was nothing Sam could do to stop it.

The hopelessness was overwhelming: the defeat deafening. For the first time in all of this, since Dean had told him what was coming, Sam didn't see an outcome where they could win. He was going to fail, he wasn't strong enough, he had no way to resist, and there wasn't anything he or his brother could do to change that.

Azazel's hand slid from the back of his neck to his throat and then up, up to his jaw. The pressure only increased as he moved, to the point where Sam had to relinquish his clenched jaw or risk a broken mandible. He gasped under those fingers, digging into his cheeks, surely leaving marks behind, and he breathed harshly through his open mouth. Those pale, flinty yellow eyes slid to the blood, just waiting there on the bed, and Sam shivered.

More games. More forced direction from the magnifying glass, moving ever closer to burning him.

The demon could feel the kid trembling in his grip and he relished the fear. Fear that may not lead to obedience, but oh, how boring it would be if it did. Azazel didn't need obedience, didn't want boring. He needed _fight_. And this boy, red in the face and spitting fire from his eyes even as Azazel taunted him with his own weakness, even as he shook with horror, had that fighting spirit in spades.

"You can always change your tune the next time we cross that bridge, Sammy," the demon whispered, practically against his face. Sam flinched and tried to pull away from the hot breath and smell of sulfur against his skin. He tapped his index finger against the hollow of the boy's cheek, if only to remind him how easy it would be to feed that blood to him. If only to remind him he could. "I'm forgiving, especially for my favorite kiddo."

He released the hunter and Sam stumbled back, breathing raggedly as he wrapped his hand around his no-doubt sore jaw. The kid was rigid, ready for a last defense, even if he knew he'd lose. Fighter through and through. Just what the devil ordered.

"Be seeing you real soon, tiger." Azazel kept those eyes locked on Lucifer's future vessel and didn't bother hiding any of his intention. One yellow eye closed in a wink. "Sweet dreams."

-o-o-o-

Sam sat up gasping, hand still raised to his jaw, which ached like the demon had been right beside him, fingers clawing into bone. Something was ringing: an obnoxious, repetitive sound that set his teeth on edge and his harried nerves aflame.

On the next bed over, Dean groaned, clearly still asleep, and fumbled for his cell, charging on the nightstand between them. Sam was still shaking, still back in his bedroom in Palo Alto, still smelling the copper tang to the air. Dean managed to find the vibrating device, disconnecting it from the cord by yanking as hard as he could. One blearily, half-cracked eye caught a glance at the caller ID before the older Winchester threw an arm over his face to block the morning light and pressed the phone to his ear.

He didn't notice Sammy sitting upright in the bed next to him or see the fear in his kid brother's face or the rigidness of his sharking form.

"What's up, Bobby?"

It was not Bobby who answered, but a female voice, low and gravely, that Dean was just starting to get used to hearing.

"Hello, Dean."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-Mystery Woman** : She wasn't originally going to be in the story yet (past Azazel digging her up) but I'm enjoying laying down the breadcrumbs way too much to stop :D_

 _ **-Bunker Key** : Yeeeeeeeah. Hey, at least I didn't leave it in the car. That's better, right guys? Plus, I mean, come on… I threw in a Jody cameo and everything! That gets me bonus points, right guys? ...Guys? ….Are those crickets I hear back there?_

 _ **-Chuck and the Winchester Gospels** : I kind of like to think that when God stops writing, bad stuff is more likely to happen because he's not attending to the story. i.e: He goes to get dinner and Azazel starts dream walking through poor Sammy's head. Not saying Chuck would have stopped him, I don't think he interferes much, but I like to think maybe it wouldn't have gone quite so terribly if he'd been around to write it. If that makes sense… :P_

 _ **-Jess and Brady:** I actually have a whole deleted scene for these two (not completed yet but I will post it when it is), where they ran into each other back at Stanford and a friendship unfolds (a real one this time, since he was possessed the entire time she knew him) which maybe turns into more. I haven't actually decided if it goes anywhere. Part of me thinks no, but I really love the thought of Jess having a full life after Sam, and maybe Brady's the start of that._

 _ **-Dream Blood:** Apparently I can't handle just writing happy for a little while. No, as soon as Dean starts to get to a good place, with his angel back in play and his poor horny body misbehaving to the comedic enjoyment of all… Well, guess that means it's time to torture Sam as much as possible. I'm starting to think I'm not really a nice person..._

 _ **-Hello, Dean:** (Case and Point:) wouldn't it be fantastic if it wasn't really Cas, but Uriel taking over Cas's vessel while he's got our poor angel strung up somewhere in Heaven until he can talk some Lucifer-sided sense into him? Meanwhile he forces the Righteous Man to get the apocalypse going (not that Dean would fall for Uriel-pretending-to-be-Cas for long) Eh? Eh? Wouldn't that be just super cruel of me, guys?_

 _XD I promise it's not actually that. I'm not that mean. (…..well…not yet, anyway…)_

 _ **-Up Next** : We finally get to see how that chat with Uriel went (not great, but poor Cas and his not-very-good character judgement skills don't quite pick up on it), and then Cas rejoins our boys for a little episodic case time while Sammy tries not to have a panic attack, knowing Azazel and his jar of blood might be around every turn or corner._


	54. Season 2: Chapter 21

_**-A/Ns: (I suggest you read if you are invested in this story's future)** I'm sure some of you noticed this story go off radar for the entire month of September. Turns out, my month was quite the lengthy one and I feel I should explain my absence, though I can't apologize for it this time. My trip to my internet-less, heavenly Lake went well and started off with a bang. Not only was I able to get a surprise chapter up right before I left, but I ran into none other than freaking **Gabriel** at the airport (and by Gabriel, I, of course, mean Richard Speight Jr!) Hell of a nice (and daaaaaamn, good looking) guy. And absolutely not as short as those gigantors make him seem on screen. So yeah, nice start to my September. However, coming back home to excitedly check my inbox for the first time in three days and not have a single new review...well, I'm not gonna lie: that hurt like a bitch._

 _Guys, I wish I wasn't the type of author who needed your support, but I am and that is **why** I write fanfiction. I have other responsibilities and interests: one of which is getting an original novel published. This story takes *hours* of my time and life, and writing it is *not* the part I love. Planning and sharing, that's what does it for me. I chose to put hours of love, sweat, and tears (and there have absolutely been tears, guys) into this story because I love sharing it with you and getting to "see" your reactions. If you don't share those with me, I don't get the motivation I require to continue writing. I have stories about book-hoppers and bowler hats and boys with no luck and anxiety driven, anti-depressant-pill-popping detectives I could be writing about, damnit, but I choose to spend my time with you guys because I **love** to fangirl with other fans. Writing fanfiction is how I do that._

 _Sharing a chapter that I'm excited about and getting almost nothing in response is like being so excited about news and having the person you're telling answer with, "...so what?" We've all had that moment, and that moment *sucks*. Talk about a motivation killer. So if you guys want this story to continue, I am asking you take five minutes out of your life *once* every *couple* of chapters and tell me that what I'm writing is actually getting a reaction out there in the abyss. I don't need waxed poetics: I just wanna know the part that made you laugh or gasp or cry or wanna murder me in my sleep, so that I keep wanting to write those parts for you! That's it!_

 _To continue my lovely month of September and this oh-so-exciting tale, I got sick for two weeks and then thrown on a project at work I left my last job to get away from, resulting in 12-16 hour days for two weeks straight, followed up by this final week of exhaustion-recovery and eye strain so bad I couldn't spend time on my phone (reading fanfiction) or my laptop (working on this story). So, I know this message is pissy and bitchy and angry, but I'm pretty pissed off, feeling like a bitch, and I'm angry because I'm *hurt*._ _And only, like...probably 25% of that actually has anything to do with you guys, and the other 75% is that I'm tired and cranky and feeling unappreciated in both my work life and my writing life. And there hasn't been *time* for a social life, so work and this story is just about all I got right now._ _So...I'm not gonna apologize, but yeah, okay, this little letter of mine probably could have taken a less bitchy tone._

 ** _-Chapter Warnings:_** _Uriel is a misguided soul,_ _Castiel's a good brother but a naive angel, Angela's on her honeymoon, and Bobby's finally trying to kill his house guests._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 21

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"So you believe Hell is up to something, brother?"

Uriel's voice, while serious, did not quite match his features, which swirled with mirth and amusement, as they so often did around Castiel. The other angel was no good with humor, as he had been told on multiple occasions, and he never did understand what Uriel found so entertaining about his presence (endearing, was what Balthazar had called it, then he'd made a face at the idea of having anything in common with Uriel.)

"There were too many demons: too concentrated," Castiel responded, staring straight ahead with his brother by his side, as they so often were. "They were waiting for something, Uriel, and what they got was Balthazar and me."

Uriel and Castiel had excused themselves from the areas more populated by their brethren to find privacy in a secluded section of Heaven. A beautiful courtyard, in fact, filled with white-barked trees peppered with dark green leaves that shimmered in a non-existent wind. Flowers lined the smooth stone tiles along the walls and floor. It was little used now, as Heaven was ever expanding, ever shifting, and this courtyard currently sat on the outskirts, too out of the way for the main masses of the Host. It was a place for seclusion and solace, one Castiel used on occasion when he did not want to share his peace of mind with the other tenants of his home. He knew the space well, and was confident they were alone in it.

"Ishim's flight was dispatched," Uriel countered, having heard the tale through the celestial grapevine as it was. A tale told from the very angel's point of view, heavily laden with his unit's successes and Castiel's disobedience. Benjamin had fiercely countered parts of it whenever he was around but with a permanent vessel and an almost indefinite assignment on Earth, it wasn't often enough to stop Ishim's version of events from spreading.

Castiel ignored them the best he could, in part because a moment of mourning would always follow for their fallen brother. Balthazar deserved the honor, but Castiel's grace ached for the loss, still fresh, and guilt was still quick to follow. The other part was that Ishim was what Dean Winchester would call a _dick_ – one who seemed particularly unpleasant whenever Castiel was around – so much so that the angel preferred to avoid his company whenever possible.

"The demons were destroyed or scattered," Uriel continued with a shrug, and Castiel could see he didn't find anything out of the ordinary about it, just as their supervisors hadn't either. "Whatever the hellspawn were planning, the might of our brothers has ended it. It's over."

The smaller angel was quiet, contemplating his next words, for they were dangerous. There would be no going back, and while he was confident in his choice to confide in Uriel, Dean's words continued to thrum a chord of anxiety in the back of his mind.

"What if it wasn't?" Castiel's eyes flickered up to his brother's, the hesitancy in his voice not something he could hide so he didn't try. "What if the demons were just the beginning?"

Uriel regarded him with a caution all his own, one Castiel suspected was his brother deciding whether to take this seriously or make a joke of it. Castiel might not be good with humor, but even he could imagine Uriel could spin quite the laugh out of this somehow. His brother was always the best at weaving humor from the least humorous of situations, and the Apocalypse certainly seemed an epitome of such.

"I returned to Earth. A second time," Castiel confessed, and Uriel's expression broke open into shock, and no small amount of amusement.

"You, Castiel? You disobeyed – on _purpose_?" Uriel laughed boisterously, and Castiel found himself biting back a frustrated noise.

"This is a serious matter, Uriel."

The larger angel did sober, though Castiel could tell he was still regarding half of this as humorous at best and simply not worth solemnity at worst. "What did you find on Earth, brother?"

Castiel hesitated for only another moment more. There was no going back, after all. "A boy. One with demon blood in his veins."

Uriel's colors shifted so abruptly that as a human he would have been aghast, something angels rarely were. His expression was no longer mirthful, all traces of amusement gone. His disgust was palpable in the meaty furling of his grace. "Abomination."

The smaller angel hid his reaction well, saving the cringe and desire to fidget deep within himself. This was not the time nor the place to display further doubt. What he was presenting Uriel with would be enough for the angel to process; Castiel did not want to add the argument that Sam Winchester was a good man.

"His brother bares a righteous soul."

Now Uriel straightened and his features shut off entirely, solidifying in a dark, colorless mass. Castiel could not read him, but he knew this brother well enough not to need to. "So it is time, then."

"If it is, and the first stages of the End are in motion, why has Heaven not struck back?" Castiel leaned into his brother's peripheral and a sliver of color slithered across Uriel's grace. "Why are the gates still shut, Uriel? Why has the host not been dispatched to investigate amassing demons?"

Uriel turned his gaze away again, and Castiel let him. It was a lot to think on. A lot Castiel was asking his brother to consider. "Perhaps they did not believe you."

The angel had to bite back his immediate words – which sounded off with a surprisingly Midwestern American accent and not a British one – and calm himself to prepare a more reasonable, less incriminating response. Castiel took a deep breath, before plunging into that deep pool of no return. "I don't think that is the case, brother."

Uriel stared, something that was not as common coming from the larger angel who preferred physical intimidation to prolonged eye contact. He was clearly taken aback by his brother's implied accusation, which was only too easy to parse. Uriel was still staring by the time Castiel looked away.

"You believe Heaven is aware and doing nothing?"

Castiel could not confirm his certainty of it without incriminating himself in far more than he was currently prepared to tell Uriel. Dean's warning – concern – still echoed in his thoughts. So he went with something that was no less true. "I fear it."

The larger angel was silent, his features stony. Finally, he regarded his brother with a sidelong, troubled look. "I will think on this, Castiel."

Without thought of his actions, Castiel reached out to grab his brother's arm. He didn't know if Uriel had been planning on leaving, but the hint of panic deep within Castiel's grace was enough to make him act. Uriel dropped his gaze to the fingers, manifestations of grace wrapped around his own, with something a lot like surprise, and perhaps a touch of suspicion. Angels did not often engage in physical contact, and both Castiel and Uriel knew this.

"Please, be careful, brother. This information is… sensitive."

Uriel stared at their intertwined grace a moment longer, Castiel's shrinking away under the scrutiny, before he met his gaze again. That wicked grin – Uriel's specialty – was suddenly back on his face. Despite the expression rarely bringing anything good Castiel's way, the smaller angel still relaxed at the familiarity. Uriel patted Castiel's hand.

"This secret is safe with me, Castiel." He said it like it was a joke, but his face was still that blank slate of grey, and Castiel knew he was serious from that alone. "We will figure this out, together."

 _Oh good,_ Castiel thought, _because,_ "There's more."

Another vein of color sliced through that stone cold grey: something light blue, surprised and, as ever with Uriel, brutishly amused. "More than the end of the world? Just how many unauthorized trips did you and Balthazar _take_?"

Castiel did not grace his brother's mockery with a response, though he had the distinct thought that if Balthazar had been here, he would have managed a human eye roll one way or another. The two had never gotten along very well, often united only in their Heavenly purpose (and even then, not that united, as Balthazar had never been particularly devout, as far as angels went) and, when that didn't get them through their disagreements, their loyalty to Castiel. It was often like being a mouse between two bickering lions. Something Castiel had not once found enjoyable.

He would have willingly endured it now, though, if only to have Balthazar back.

"This is not about Earth," Castiel returned, rather than indulge Uriel with humor he didn't understand, so rarely answered correctly, and was certainly not in the mood for. "Do you know of an angel named Naomi?"

If the new topic seemed out of place to Uriel, he did not show it. His demeanor fell back to his more natural stance, still held stiff but not rigidly so, and that dull, disinterested yellow flickered through his being. "I have heard the name, but I am unfamiliar with our sister as anything more than that."

Castiel refused to entertain the trill of something worrisome deep in his gut at another angel who had not heard of this Naomi, like she was some sort of dirty secret Heaven kept locked away. Heaven was not supposed to _have_ secrets. However, that was clearly Dean's influence on him. Two was a terrible sample size, for starters, and there were thousands in the Host. Castiel did not know all of his siblings personally; Uriel not knowing them all either was not proof of a conspiracy.

"Why do you ask?"

The angel startled, realizing he had lost focus. Uriel was watching him, flickers of lilac curiosity sifting through his grace. On the heels of his suspicions about the Apocalypse and Heaven's upcoming role in it (or lack thereof), the question concerning a random sister of theirs was bound to catch Uriel's notice, if not his interest.

"I heard a… troubling rumor," Castiel decided to answer with, since it wasn't strictly a lie and he was uncertain how else to frame what Dean had told him. Uriel would surely notice the lack of a named source, but Castiel also knew he wouldn't ask. It was one of the many reasons he chose to approach this brother first; Uriel was not one to gossip. "I have heard she is responsible for brainwashing angels into obedience. Wiping their memories. Con-" The smaller angel had to pause to clear his throat. "Controlling them."

Castiel frowned at the own skip in his voice and the way his grace waivered, ever so minutely, as he said it. He did not like the way that image he'd glimpsed from Dean's mind – the human's impression of him, in Jimmy Novak's body, standing over him with bloodied fists and a blank expression – interrupted his thoughts enough to cause that stutter. Castiel liked even less how long it took him to banish that image from his mind.

Uriel was regarding him silently, expression filled with stormy swirls of greys and deep blues. When Castiel finally succeeded in pushing that intruding memory far away and re-center himself, he realized with a start that his brother was not adamantly denying the possibility, which is what he had expected Uriel – or any brother – to do.

Because it _shouldn't be possible_.

As the smaller angel stared at him, wide-eyed realization taking shape into something ugly – something terrifying – Uriel confirmed the unthinkable. "I have seen it."

It was Castiel's turn for shock to flash through his swirling grace, and his brother shifted beside him, as uncomfortable as the angel had ever seen him.

"Do you remember Egypt? The slaying of the firstborns?"

Castiel recalled the orders, issued by God, and knew he had buried his own sorrow at the command deep within his being. It was God's word. It was just. But it was still the death of thousands of innocents, and Castiel had mourned each of them.

"I was not there," he responded evenly, "but I recall the event."

Uriel sent him a look, not quite head-on. It was as pointed as it was evasive, and something in Castiel's grace froze, solid and hurting and brittle, as he realized what his brother was saying without words.

 _No_ , Castiel thought, desperately, and he had to turn away for fear of letting slip all that he fought so hard to keep buried. Emotions he knew he could not let get the best of him, no matter what a pair of humans with brightly burning souls had to say of it.

"I lost track of you," Uriel began, thankfully unaware or blessedly unwilling to mention Castiel's roiling feelings, blatantly spread across his very being.

Castiel could not help but turn back to him, to stare, eyes blown wide in horror and disbelief, at the confirmation that he had been there. That what Dean had said was true. That he was missing memories (memories of _horrible_ things). That he had already been a victim of this Naomi and her sinister reeducation once before.

"We split up, and I did not see you again until after the mission was complete."

Castiel could only stare, something terrible and violating shivering up his grace.

"When I reported to Heaven, our superiors told me you had already returned." Uriel's expression was dark, with traces of silvery regret flowing like small rivulets through flashes of angry red. "But I did not see you for some time, and it was decades later that I thought to ask you about it. I recalled our glorious success that night. How the pharaoh wailed and the might of Heaven proved too much for the insolent human to bare." Uriel turned to him, that deep red winning out over everything else, anger evident in his shifting grace. "You said you had not been assigned to the mission at all."

Castiel remembered that. He remembered his brother coming to him, jovial and celebratory in their latest mission, and how he had reminisced of others. Egypt, particularly, which had struck Castiel as odd. Uriel was not the forgetful type (no angel was; it was an impossibility for their kind), but Castiel had not been sent on that mission. Instead, he had been selected to patrol the borders of Egypt, to keep out interference from the other Pantheons that might chose to aid their patrons. He and many others.

"You were there, brother. With me." Uriel spoke softly, perhaps the softest Castiel had ever heard of the angel. Uriel was not known for such softness. "I knew something was off that day."

"Why did you not say something?" Castiel asked, voice and grace numb while his mind flew.

Uriel shifted again, clearly uncomfortable. "You were always fine afterward. An honorable – admirable – soldier. I thought, perhaps they were collecting your memories of battle for further analysis."

It sounded weak, and Castiel could tell Uriel thought so as well. Still, the angel could hardly blame his brother. He had also refused to believe the possibility, even with the memories of a human who had nearly died at the hands of that brainwashing. It was little fault of Uriel's that he had chosen reason, however feeble, to explain the unbelievable rather than confront it.

Despite all of that, Castiel did not miss the fact that Uriel had spoken in _plurals_.

"How many times has this happened?" he asked, cold, breathless. This couldn't be happening. It should not be happening.

"I don't know. But I believe something similar occurred in that city lost to sin, where those filthy monkeys demanded to know us."

Castiel's grace rippled with distaste, which was at least something other than the numbness that had overtaken him. He remembered the occasion. It had been absurd. Outrageous. And the last in a list of unforgiveable sins that had ultimately doomed the people residing there. Uriel had destroyed the blight upon their father's beautiful earth while Castiel got the only righteous man and what family would come with him out of the area.

But Castiel recalled that; he remembered the mission and its conclusion. What part was he missing?

Uriel could not tell him. "We were separated in our task, and again I lost track of you. By the time I returned to Heaven, you were already with our superiors."

Or, as they were both beginning to realize, this Naomi.

"Do you know of any others?" Castiel asked, voice still too quiet, too empty, grave devoid of colors for fear that if any showed at all, there'd be nothing left. The angel was trying to think of all the missions with Uriel that he had separated from the other angel, that such a reeducation experience may have happened, and there were _many._ He was often paired with Uriel; a good counterbalance to his brother's tendency towards wrathful vengeance over diplomacy. It was well known among the garrison that Castiel was slower to anger and therefore violence, and good at tempering such in others. His brothers had called it, on more than one occasion, a good match.

Castiel had never thought on it further. They made a good pair and always had. But how many of those missions had ended with Castiel's memories wiped? His mind told lies which he believed (how could he not? He didn't even know there was an alternative). His grace, his persons, felt violated. It was _terrifying_ , the number of times it could have happened, and Castiel would never know which of them were at fault. Had no way of ever knowing.

It was too much to process. Too much, with everything Dean had also promised was coming, was wrong. Castiel was quickly reaching his capacity to contain it all.

"I am sorry, brother," Uriel spoke, the sincerity clear across his grace even as his voice grew deep and his expression swirled with growing anger. "I did not realize what they had taken from you. It is appalling. Unforgiveable." The angel was fuming, his grace puffing up with building indignation and maybe less-than-righteous fury. "Heaven is not as we thought."

"Sodom and its sisters was destroyed thousands of years ago," Castiel replied numbly, aware of his brother's impending explosion but unable to find room for it among the buzzing in his mind. There was a terrible shudder in his grace that never seemed to end and he could not _control it_. Like his memories, apparently. Or his actions, or his mind.

This was too much.

"Egypt was not so long after," he continued, and Uriel was staring at him, anger paused if only for the moment. Castiel met his gaze. "Was Heaven ever more than it is now? Then it was then? What proof is there that our home – that our brothers – have not always been this way? That we were not just too blinded – _brainwashed_ – to see its stains?"

Uriel was visibly upset at the implication and, worse yet, at the lack of argument against it. He fisted his hands and his wings furled and unfurled in clear agitation. Castiel was grieved to be the messenger, but he did not regret coming to his brother. He was unprepared to face this alone.

"How long have we played this game," Uriel muttered, staring into the distance of a Heaven that suddenly was not so bright. To be truthful, it had not been bright to Uriel for some time. Heaven's light had fallen with its Morning Star and it was only now that he was ready to accept it for the truth that it was. "A game with rules that do not make sense!"

Castiel dropped his head, for he had no answered for his brother, clearly as hurt at this betrayal as Castiel had been. Still was.

"We will right this," Uriel suddenly declared, and Castiel raised his head, surprised by the adamant fury in his brother's voice. Deep brown eyes, filled with years of fighting side by side, met Castiel's gaze. There was a determination there that the smaller angel was not sure he should find comforting or terrifying. "There are still things worth believing in, Castiel."

He wanted to believe that. Was fairly sure he did believe that. Though, given the recent turn of events and the future promised to him by a man who had already seen it, it was unlikely the same thing Uriel was talking about.

For, mistakenly, Castiel was sure his brother spoke of God.

"I will seek out others," Uriel continued, a new strength in his voice as his grace solidified from its whirlwind of emotional output and distress.

Castiel's eyes widened, his own grace leaping with panic, but Uriel merely folded his hand atop his smaller brother's, patting it once more. There was something in his eyes – a swimming sort of awe that Castiel was surprised to see in his usually brutish friend – and Uriel actually smiled at him.

"I will be discreet, brother," he promised, though it didn't settle Castiel's apprehension nearly as much as he wished it would. "We don't have to wait any longer. Others will join us. We need only be unafraid."

With a final pat to his hand, so odd for the often overbearing but physically reserved angel, Uriel took flight and Castiel could not summon the words to stop him. He was uncomfortable with the thought of the other angel spreading word of this, but he also knew that Uriel would honor his promise. They would face this together. He understand the risk involved; he would be discreet. And Castiel knew they would need help in the coming times: others to stand with them against the wrongs that Heaven was soon to pursue. It had been his winning argument against returning to Heaven, after all.

Castiel sank down onto one of the courtyard benches, the silence only echoing Uriel's last words, and the angel realized he _was_ afraid. For the first time, in a long time, he was well and truly afraid.

-o-o-o-

The distant humming of the cosmos, always a present melody that vibrated within the walls of Heaven's constructs, was doing nothing to soothe Castiel, whose world was very surely crashing down around him. He knew the feeling was not a literal one. Heaven's walls were sturdy. Impenetrable. They would never crumble, not so long as there were angels there to maintain their strength and beauty.

Angels that were not strong or beautiful. Some of them. But which ones?

Castiel let his head drop to his hands and tried to even out the swells of his grace, like a human breathing through panic. But he could not. His mind had been tampered with, his thoughts _adjusted_ , his very being _fixed_. All so he would be a good soldier.

But how – when – had he not been? Castiel could not imagine himself disobeying to an extreme that demanded such cruelty. Such violation. But was it the reeducation – Naomi's brainwashing – that had him unable to imagine such a thing? The thought was terrifying, and led to much bigger, far more unsettling questions that Castiel was not ready for.

( _Who am I? Am I myself? Or am I what Naomi has made of me? What was I before?_ Who _was I before? Am I that person still?)_

Suddenly, the walls around him really were closing in. Too close. The leaves fluttered too distractedly. The flowers smelled too strong. Overwhelming. His brothers' voices, perpetually raised in song, as always there was song being sung in the Heavenly Kingdom, were not comforting, but intruding. Spying. Ever present, looking over his shoulder, always _there_ , always watching. One misstep, and he would be taken to Naomi, an angel he had never met, to his knowledge. But knowledge – everything he had ever known – was no longer reliable.

 _Obey._

Obey _who_? Dean had been right. Heaven was not in God's hands anymore, and if it was, then He was no longer a father Castiel could be loyal to. His only choice left was to disobey.

Castiel couldn't breathe, something that was incredibly absurd, because he knew he didn't need to. Among the mounting panic, an echo of a memory – traces of James Novak's voice in his head, offering a kind ear – grounded Castiel for only a moment, but the moment was enough.

He opened his eyes and looked down at himself. His grace was rippling, minute tremors running like waves through the translucent, ever shifting essence. He was shaking.

Castiel could not stay there. He could not stay in Heaven. Not now, not in this moment. He could not be there, where it wasn't safe. Where anything – and he didn't know _what_ – could land him back in this Naomi's hands. Where no one would listen, or those that would might join him in his punishment. He needed safety. Sanctuary. He needed… he needed…

That memory of the warmth of his own grace, burrowed in the supernova of a righteous soul, connecting him to another in a way he had never yet experienced, was suddenly a demanding ache, tight across his panicking chest.

 _Obey._

The angel took flight before he allowed that voice in his head – the voice that had always been with him but which he'd never before known as familiar – could talk him out of it.

-o-o-o-

Angela Anne Garrett was on vacation. Her pre-marital, honeymoon-recon vacation with Mark. Actually, she was pretty sure she was on her second pre-marital, honeymoon-recon vacation. Oh, her first honeymoon-recon vacation a second time.

It was hard to explain. Harder yet to grasp onto. She was pretty sure she'd done all of this before, but anytime the feeling made it through the cocoon of happiness, Angela struggled to hold on to it. In the end, she always surrendered back to the blissful ignorance of a week with Mark on a beach in Aruba (something her mother thought was just ridiculous. _'You_ live _in Hawaii! Why on Earth would you want to spend your honeymoon on a beach? Go to Iceland or something!'_ )

Angela didn't pay the fluctuating feeling much mind. Ten days of paradise with the love of her life wasn't the worst thing to have on repeat, if that was, in fact, what was happening. She was pretty sure it was.

That certainty cemented one late afternoon when she looked up from her favorite romance novel and spotted Castiel. She and Mark were stretched out on their favorite beach chairs beneath a blue cabana that had become 'theirs' during their stay here, waiting for one of the most beautiful sunsets she would ever recalled seeing. Although it took her a moment to place the out-of-place man (first there was curiosity – amusement at the man in his fuzzy slippers in the sand – then confusion, recognition that this was a friend, and the feeling she should go greet him as such quickly dashed by a foreboding that finally brought forth his name and purpose here), Angela was suddenly very certain she would not be seeing that sunset tonight. She sat upright as things fell into place with a clarity they had not had for the last several days.

The angel was standing in the sand, water almost lapping at his slippers with each reaching wave. That silly trench coat looked even hotter in the Aruba sun than it had in Hawaii. His blue eyes were locked on hers. She set the book aside, her fancy cocktail with its little umbrella set on the side table. The movement dislodged her fiancé's hand from her thigh, arm stretched across the gap between their chairs, and he startled from his light snooze, free hand automatically catching the Tom Clancy novel as it started to slide off his chest.

"What is it, honey?" Mark reached up to drag his sunglasses lower on his nose, looking to her over the rim of them, but she could tell they were sleepy just from his voice. She couldn't help but smile at him, this man she loved to the ends of the Earth – if the earth indeed had ends – until she once more remembered the angel waiting on her.

"Just a friend," she answered softly, eyes shifting back over to him. He hadn't moved. Hadn't come any closer, like he didn't want to intrude. Or he didn't know if he was welcome. But she could tell even from their spot a dozen feet away that something was wrong. Castiel looked wrecked. No, that wasn't quite right. He looked like a person trying to hide how wrecked he was.

"Oh, great." Mark laid back down, a lazy smile on his face and Angela knew he was already well on his way back to his nap. "Didn't know you knew anyone in Aruba."

"He's a new friend." She climbed off the chair, grabbing her swim wrap and throwing it over her bikini. There was something about greeting an angel in so little clothing that somehow seemed…inappropriate. Which was frankly silly, considering the guy was in her head right now. Didn't get any more intimate or personal than that. Still.

"Should I come with to meet this new friend?" Mark asked, forgoing the call of sleep to sit up, sliding his sunglasses atop his ridiculously curly, full hair. Island blood; her jealousy of it knew no bounds. She couldn't wait for to see their children. They were going to be _gorgeous_.

"No, I'll just be a moment…" Angela trailed off, realization settling in again that she likely wouldn't be right back. She faltered, unsure what to tell Mark, suddenly unsure if she even wanted to go to the angel she had been seconds away from jogging over to. But something told her she still should, even if she wasn't quite sure why.

So she turned to Mark and cupped his cheeks in her hands. He grinned up at her, a lascivious glance darting down her body following after, waggling his eyebrows in a ridiculous manner that had her laughing even as she bent down. Angela pressed her lips to his: slow and sweet and loving and long.

"I'll be back soon, fiancé," she whispered against his skin, running her fingers over the stubble on his cheeks and chin.

"Soon to be husband," he responded with a wink.

There was something sad about this, deep within the fuzziness wrapped around it, fighting through the cloud of happy the same way the idea that this had all happened before had tried, but Angela chose not to pursue it. She didn't want to know. She kissed her man again, savoring the moment, before pulling away with a smile and jogged down the beach towards the waiting angel.

"Castiel," she greeted, slowing in her jog and tucking the swim wrap around her a little tighter. He didn't greet her back right away, and she bit back a sigh. "None of this is real, is it?"

"A memory," he supplied, and he sounded even worse than he was trying not to look. "May I have your permission?"

Castiel's hand was fisted by his side and he didn't look away from her, but that intense gaze hardly seemed focused on _her._ She hesitated, only because she had no idea what had caused this change in him and was worried about what it meant (for her, for him, for the world). She glanced over her shoulder at the cabana, where Mark was watching them from his chair, even as a waiter brought over a fresh beer from the bar.

"Will he be here when I get back?" Angela turned back to the blue-eyed angel and Castiel nodded, eyes solemn and serious. "Then yes."

-o-o-o-

They both woke up, two lives in one body, in Bobby Singer's spare bedroom upstairs, right where they'd left. Castiel immediately removed the ventilation tube and other necessities for keeping a human body alive, along with the several monitoring wires and intravenous feeds connected to her arms. The machines began flashing lights, warnings popping up across the various screens, but the alarms made no noise, likely a setting Sam selected so as not to disturb the occupants of the house the next time Castiel returned. The angel switched the machines off with a simple thought and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

 _"How long has it been?"_ Angela asked, awake within Castiel's conscience, protected from the experience of housing an angel the best she could be with Castiel's grace.

"Two weeks," the angel supplied, standing from the bed and testing the fortitude of the vessel, urging her grace to flow through the atrophied limbs and repair any damage that two weeks of bedrest had inflicted.

She could feel Angela's surprised. _"Really? I definitely wasn't in Aruba for two weeks."_

"Time flows differently in the mind than it does on the conscious plane, particularly when one is immersed in memories." It had not been only the one memory either. Castiel had placed Angela in a loop of her most cherished times, unwilling to leave her in that empty comatose state again. If the angel was the one keeping her from Heaven and the paradise of memories to be found there, the least that could be done was to give the human a facsimile. What she could provide would be a more noticeable arena than that of Heaven itself, and Angela would likely be aware what she was experiencing wasn't real if she went looking, but Castiel sensed that anything was better than the vacant pool.

 _"Thank you_ ," she said, the depth of emotion in her voice suggesting she'd heard far more than what Castiel had voiced aloud.

The angel shifted, unfamiliar with the discomfort stirred by the human's gratitude. Angela was the one doing Castiel the favor by volunteering her body. "You're welcome."

 _"So what's our next move?"_

Castiel was already heading for the door. "We should locate Sam and Dean."

Because they were her charges and she had promised to check in as soon as she could. Not because her grace was burning with uncertainty and lingering fear – something else she was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with – leaving Castiel with a misplaced but driving need to visually confirm the humans were safe as well, and perhaps reconnect with that flare of grace that could confirm for her that all of this would be _okay._

Not that Castiel had a clue how any of this – any of the things she had learned from Uriel today – could ever be okay.

 _"We should let that other man – Bobby? The one who owns the house – know we're here first."_ The angel frowned at the human's words, unsure why telling Bobby Singer of their return was necessary. Surely he would notice on his own. Angela must have sensed the confusion. _"It'll probably creep him out if the body he's keeping alive in the attic mysteriously disappears."_

"We are not in the attic." As if to emphasize her point, Castiel opened the bedroom door to reveal the second floor hallway beyond. The stairwell to the first level was to the left, other bedrooms and the bath to the right.

" _Okay, word of the day._ _Word? No, phrase? Never mind: human thing of the day!"_ Angela Anne Garrett was very fast paced with her words and often did not make sense, particularly in direct correlation to the speed at which she spoke. _"Human thing of the day today is: Exaggeration for Dramatic Emphasis."_

Castiel furled her brow, standing in Bobby Singer's upstairs hallway, trying to figure out the human in her head. "Why would the location of the room emphasize anything?"

Other than the location of the room, which would not be an exaggeration, but a fact. Humans did not make sense. Another fact.

 _"Because the attic is creepy. Just like an almost dead body stuck on a ventilator, breathing away hour after hour – all comatose-like – is creepy."_

The angel worked through that for the underlying importance, which was not inherently clear. "So, the location of the attic increases the creepiness of the comatose body?"

 _"Exactly. You're getting it. Now, imagine going to check on that body, tucked away in your attic, only to find it missing."_ Angela sucked in a breath she wasn't capable of breathing, but Castiel got the impression it was for further 'dramatic emphasis.' _"That's horror movie material right there. Think about it; where did it go? Did it get up and walk away on its own? Did somebody steal it? Is it still in the house with you?"_

She was almost whispering now, yet somehow her voice seemed loud. Castiel raised her eyes skyward, to the attic above which she could sense clearly through the layers of the floor and insulation. There was nothing to fear there, to her knowledge. However, there was little that an Angel of the Lord would find 'creepy' and much that a mortal might.

"In regard to all those questions, the answer in this scenario would be yes."

 _"See?"_ Angela sounded immensely satisfied with the answer and, what Castiel suspected, was her performance. Both seemed suspect to the angel. _"Creepy."_

"Yes." Castiel turned and started for the stairs, deciding that while she could perhaps comprehend what Angela was talking about, she hardly understood it, nor did it seem particularly important to do so. Regardless, she would indulge the human, who was attempting to teach her human things (on a daily schedule, apparently). "We will inform Bobby of our return, so we do not 'creep him out.'"

In addition, he may know the location of Sam and Dean, sparing Castiel the effort of searching for them. The angel started down the stairs.

 _"Next time you use that tone of voice, raise your hands with just your pointer and middle finger up – like bunny ears – and curl them twice. Like this.'_ Castiel turned her gaze inward to watch the human demonstrate as she continued her way to the first level of the house. _"They're called air quotes. Do it around Dean; he'll love it."_

Castiel was uncertain if she was serious (there was something about the amusement in her voice that reminded the angel of when Balthazar would make fun of her) but didn't think she was entirely joking either. An opportunity to do something that would please her human charge was something Castiel would certainly make note of, however, considering Dean Winchester's sometimes volatile mood.

The angel stepped onto the landing of the first floor, the last of the stairs squeaking as she did so, just as a shotgun blast broke through the silence of the house and their conversation.

Castiel hardly flinched, though the surprise of the hit – the buckshot ripping through the t-shirt Dean had been kind enough to offer her, piercing flesh and muscle beneath, and the strangled cry Angela had released before Castiel was able to shove her deep, deep down – was enough to make the angel blink in surprise and glance down at her damaged chest. She looked back up to Bobby Singer, standing in front of his desk, eyes blown wide as he realized who it was he'd just shot.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered beneath his breath, lowering the shotgun, the end still smoking from the recent fire. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!"

The angel frowned, scanning the older hunter once over. "You do not currently have any blood clots that appear worrisome. Thought there is a fungal infection on your right largest toe that should be treated."

The look Bobby Singer sent her was hard to decipher. Castiel gathered that her attempt to appease the hunter, both in his now and future health, had misfired.

"Gee, thanks?"

Yes, that tone definitely suggested a misfire. Still, it would be rude not to respond at all.

"You are welcome."

Bobby let out a haggard sigh, muttering something about male testicular anatomy under his breath and setting the shotgun against the desk. "Can you heal that, or do I need to be worrying about yer vessel?"

Castiel glanced down at her body, filled with buckshot and salt, and repaired the damage to flesh and cloth alike with a quick flare of grace. She also took a moment to assess Angel's soul, which was certainly shaken but soothed with relative ease beneath the angel's calming probe. Still, Castiel sensed it might be best to give the human some time before raising her conscience once more. She placed her back in her memory loop, with an underlying mantra that all was fine, and returned to the physical plane.

The hunter in front of her seemed oddly relieved by the physical restoration to her vessel. The tension in his body bled off into more annoyance than distress, which Castiel had heard Dean refer to as 'gruff.' Idly, Castiel wondered if a ventilated, comatose-like body in the attic was even creepier with a bullet wound to the chest, but decided not to bother her host to just find out.

"You looking for Sam and Dean?" Bobby was staring at her expectantly and Castiel realized she missed several of the hunter's last words, though they had been mostly muttered and not entirely intended for her (something about getting her a bell? Castiel was uncertain what the purpose of that instrument would in an angel's hands.)

"Yes," Castiel answered, internally warring about the reason she had come in the first place. What had seemed so desperate and insurmountable in Heaven now felt foolish. "If…they are not otherwise preoccupied."

Bobby reached over to his desk, snatched up a small, dark, rectangular object, and lobbed it Castiel's way. "Ask 'em yerself. Boys are on one."

Castiel caught the object with ease and opened her hand to reveal a cell phone. The angel knew the purpose of the device. She had seen enough of Heaven's souls using them throughout their memories, often talking to their favorite loved ones who lived too far away to see in person. Over the years, the power of the device had grown global, nearly limitless, but Castiel remembered the very first of them that had revolutionized human communication and, more importantly, human relations. Now, as she stared at the largely unknown device in her hands, Castiel regretted not paying more attention to how those humans used their phones.

The angel looked back up with a blank face and a long silence. One party filled that silence with several blinks, the other with absolutely none at all. Finally, Bobby made a noise in the back of his throat and trudged over to show Cas how to use speed dial.

-o-o-o-

Uriel landed in the Lesser Hall, in the eastern reaches of Heaven. There were actually three Lesser Halls (and two Greater) in Heaven's expanse of cathedrals, grand halls, domed amphitheaters, archways, hallways, gardens, and courtyards. No matter how Heaven shifted – how some rooms fell off while others were born anew, or some simply became something else entirely (so that one day you were enjoying the company of your brethren in the Northern Lesser Hall and the next day it was a broom closet (not that Heaven needed brooms. None of the angels had yet really questioned why they had a broom closet to begin with)). But no matter how their home shifted and grew and changed, there were always two Greater Halls and three Lesser. And it was the Eastern Lesser Hall that Uriel flew to now, a quick search of his target's grace leading him there.

"Malachi." The Anarchist. He turned as Uriel touched down, dull surprise lighting his aura, likely due not only to his brother's unexpected presence, but Uriel's downright joviality. Uriel was never jovial, unless you were at the butt of his most recent joke, and Malachi was not known for a sense of humor. Or patience. Or civility with either of the aforementioned traits in others.

As a matter of fact, the two were hardly close. They had spoken a handful of times, if that. However, there was mutual respect there, even if it remained – would remain – unvoiced. They were, after all, both _specialists_ , though their skillsets certainly differed. Still, in this matter, Uriel was confident he would find a like-minded compatriot.

"Uriel," the anarchist greeted in return, that look of surprise still there, though it stunk of derision. It matched his words. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I have news of great interest, brother." Uriel drew himself up to his fullest, chest puffed, muscle and sinew of pure grace bulking. "News which I believe you and I share a similar interest in."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **-A/Ns**_ _: And so it begins. (to the reviewer who requested Heaven's civil war to happen during the Apocalypse... it's like you *know* me ;D)_

 _ **-Reviews:** I really don't want you guys to feel obligated to comment on this story, but my continued interest in writing it does rely heavily on knowing people are out there enjoying it. So I would appreciate some brief feedback - just a couple of words - when something I write gets a reaction out of you. I don't expect every chapter to do so, but please, let me know when I do. Or if I'm wrong altogether and don't have a story that's causing reactions to begin with._

 _To those of you who have reviewed: Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. They have influenced and supported this story more than you know._

 _...and okay, I apologize for the bitchy tone of the AN at the start of this. I don't apologize enough to go back up and change it; I think it was fair for me to get that out. But...yes, I apologize for the tone because you guys don't deserve to get bitched at just because I needed to bitch._

 _Until next time._

 _-Silence_


	55. Season 2: Chapter 22

_**-Reviews:** Thank you very much to everyone who came out of the woodwork to review (and, of course, to my special peeps who review quite often [insert heart here since ff dot net won't let me do it. Damn you ff dot net!]). I really appreciate you guys taking the time to say something. And I hope you know that I really do get it: reviewing ain't easy. I've got twenty open internet tabs on my phone right now and at least eighteen of those are stories I've read where I went "wow, this is really good, I should review! ...I'll just leave this tab open and come back to that in a minute." (two. Months. Later). "Why do I have twenty friggin' internet tabs open?! Oh, yeah, this was that story I liked...crap, let me just do a quick little read through here... wow, this is really good! I should review! Okay, I'll just leave this tab open and come back to that in a minute..." -_- _

_Trust me, guys, I really do get it. It's one of many reasons I do not expect a review every chapter. Other reasons being that not every chapter is a great one and some aren't your cup of 'holy-amazeballs-tea-that-is-review-worthy'. Some are pure action, other's pure chatter, some are filler, some are more fluff or Destiel, who not every reader here is into! I don't expect every chapter to rock your socks, so just let me know when one does and we'll be good :)_

 _And that can be as simple as a quick, 'I liked the part where Dean takes Cas bra shopping.'_

 _...wait, what now?_

 _ **-Quality Warning:** This is the last author's note, I swear. Turns out, my eyes are not done being strained yet, so this chapter did not get all the editing it should have, and definitely had some last minute fixes that might be a mess. Mainly lots of Dean-Internally-Panicking which is always fun to write but a bit of a hazard to police for clarity/flow without several read-throughs (you know, make sure it's not confusing to follow given the ninety-two tangents that boy's brain can go through when it's busy panicking.) Hopefully it's not a complete mess (and if it is, hopefully it's an enjoyable mess)._

 ** _-Chapter Warnings:_** _Cas is a klepto,_ _Dean's learning things about the angel's vessel he didn't need to know (and yet, also, really did...),_ _Angela's the devil, and Sam's innocently shopping for groceries all the meanwhile. And all that is definitely not where we left off last chapter, so...whuuut?_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 22

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean barely glanced at the caller ID, only enough to see the first letter and a general length of name before he flung his arm over his head in an effort to block out the light and the whole 'being awake' thing. The concept didn't get along with him all that well before about ten am. Especially not before a good, hot cup of coffee in his favorite dead-guy-robe.

"What's up, Bobby?" He heard Sam sit up in the bed over, his breathing a little heavy. Bad dream, then? Kid had had plenty of 'em once they left Jess behind, and plenty more that came standard with the job. But he was climbing off the mattress and making his way to the bathroom before Dean could check on him, and considering it wasn't a flat out sprint to pay homage to the porcelain god (and there weren't any telling sounds once the door was closed), the older Winchester decided it probably wasn't worth worrying over.

"Hello, Dean."

Any lingering concern that might have existed for Sam (despite Dean's attempt to play it cool and wave it off) was shelved the instant he realized who was on the other end of the line. It took a minute, but the grin on his face was pretty instantaneous once he figured it out.

"I am not Bobby," the voice continued after a moment's pause. Following another half a second of silence, the angel needlessly added, "This is Castiel."

The hunter resisted the urge to say _'no shit'_ back, and instead sat up on the bed. "I kinda figured that, given Bobby's voice is, you know, a dude's."

There was a third pause, and by that point Dean was trying not to laugh at Cas's unfortunate phone skills. Some things never changed.

"Of course," Cas finally answered. "Where are you and Sam currently?"

The grin only grew and Dean reached over to the nightstand, fiddling around with the pad of paper every motel left on top or in the drawer, with the name and address of the place usually somewhere on it. When he found it, he climbed off the bed, reading it aloud to the angel.

"Just give Bobby back his-" An undertone of flapping wings interrupted his sentence and he looked up, standing in the small space between the beds, to find Cas directly in front of him, Bobby's cell still pressed to her ear. "-phone."

Dean stared at the angel, less than a foot from him – way too close for comfort and personal space – and sighed. He lowered the phone, Cas mirroring his movements, and ended the call with his thumb.

"Go give Bobby his phone back. _Then_ come here." He managed not to add ' _dumbass_ ', fond as it would have been. It was good to have the angel back, where he could see her, safe and not rotting in one of Heaven's prisons without them even knowing it.

Cas glanced to the device in her hand, understanding and maybe even a touch of embarrassment hidden well in that blank face. She nodded at the directive and promptly disappeared. Dean always hated how the angel did that, somehow distracting Dean for only that split second with something – anything: a noise off to the side, a brush of air to his cheek that always made him turn or at least look away – so that he never saw the exact moment Cas left. Always just missed it. It drove the hunter crazy, and he had spent years trying not to look away, almost all the way up to Cas losing his wings.

Dean tossed his phone on the bed, unplugging the cord from the wall to throw it on the bed as well so he wouldn't forget it when they checked out. They'd lost their fair share of odds and ends to motels over the years. He could hear water running in the bathroom and eyed the door a little worriedly, surprised Sam hadn't come out to see Cas.

"You alright, Sammy?" he called out. He heard his little brother splash water on his face.

"Yeah, fine," the kid answered through the door, words muffled by even the thin layer of wood. "Bad dream."

Dean scrunched his face up at the door. It wasn't that he thought Sam was lying – he probably wasn't, after all – but he was definitely questioning if his brother was omitting some stuff with that would-be confession. Still, the brothers had a sort of unspoken rule about nightmares, and that was to shut up about them. If someone wanted to talk, they'd talk. And if not, then it was a common courtesy to leave it be.

"Clowns or midgets?" Didn't mean he couldn't be his usual big brother self, though. That was his job.

The rustle of wings announced Cas's return before he got more of an answer than an annoyed grunt through the door. Dean purposefully took a step back so that when Cas returned she wasn't damn near nose to nose with him. They were gonna have to have that personal bubble talk again. Especially this early in the morning. Especially this early in the morning when Dean was wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of boxers. But the talk was definitely for a time when he was fully clothed.

"Dude, personal space, buddy," is as much as he would tackle before clothes (or coffee). He lightly tapped Cas on the bicep, friendly enough (just two friends, in a hotel room, no biggie), to get her to move enough so he could push past her smaller frame. The angel really didn't move all that much (another thing they'd work on: hints), but Dean was able to slide past and gain access to the rest of the room and, more importantly, his clothes (just two friends, of the opposite sex, one of them not really clothed, squeezing past one another in a small space between two beds, alone (mostly) in a tiny little hotel room. Like he said: no biggie.)

"Why would Sam be dreaming of clowns or midgets?"

Dean choked on a laugh as he made it to his bag with minor incident (nothing he couldn't hide and definitely wasn't thinking about) and quickly threw on yesterday's jeans. Better. Good start.

"Cuz little Sammy's terrified of both those things," he answered with a snicker, only to hear a thump and a muffled 'I am not!' coming from the bathroom. Dean just sniggered harder, rummaging around in his bag for a clean shirt, well aware of Cas's eyes locked on his back.

"Why would either of those things be terrifying?" the angel asked, head tilted to the side and a curious pull to her eyebrows.

"After we watch Star Trek, we'll move on to Stephen King. Then you'll see."

Cas didn't answer, and Dean busied himself with pulling off the t-shirt he slept in and throwing on the fresh shirt as quickly as possible. It was more awkward than he cared to admit (and since when was he friggin' body shy?! This was ridiculous. So Cas was in a hot chick's body. It was damn well time his body – and his brain – got over it.)

He cleared his throat, turning back towards Cas now that he had a couple centimeters of cotton armor between them, only to find the angel's eyes centered on his chest. Dean blinked and, out of habit, glanced down at himself. There didn't seem to be anything worth staring at…

The hunter cleared his throat, and Castiel's gaze snapped up to his. Dean almost made a joke about his eyes being up there, but ended up awkwardly shelving it. Cas in a girl's body was just too weird, man.

"So everything okay?" Dean asked instead, pulling at the hem of his shirt to adjust it almost nervously while Cas's eyes stayed firmly locked on his. So weird. "You're not here with some urgent, world-ending news?"

The angel looked downright fidgety, and her gaze briefly dipped back towards his chest. "No. Nothing urgent. I am just… checking in?"

Dean paused, narrowing his eyes on his friend. Not that he wasn't thrilled to see the angel (weird behavior aside (but then again, when was Cas _not_ weird?)), and happy nothing upstairs had gone to shit, but Castiel sounded like she was asking that as much for her own sake as for getting the idiom right.

"You sure?" he asked, setting his socks back down and rounding his full attention on the angel. "You look pretty frazzled." Dean paused, frowning as his nose wrinkled with a familiar smell that hadn't been there when he first woke up. "And why do you smell like gunpowder?"

Castiel did not know what frazzled looked like, but she imagined with the haste she had left Heaven and the urgency she'd felt in locating her charges, that _frazzled_ was likely apt. She did not quite understand what had sent her to earth with such drive, and was quickly feeling more and more foolish for the rash decision. Sam and Dean were fine. They were clearly not in any danger. And the sliver of her own grace – that she had so desperately needed to connect with a scant hour ago – was secure as ever in Dean's chest, no change or urgency to note.

Cas hesitated, the foolishness swelling, as she considered lying in response to Dean's question. The immediate response – _no, I am not sure, but I am not sure for no reason_ – was not one she felt comfortable admitting. She was now fairly certain there had been no threat in Heaven, nor any reason to flee so irrationally. However, she was also quite terrible at lying.

"I surprised Bobby Singer with my return." Enough so that he had discharged a firearm, though Castiel hardly thought that needed to be said. "But I am…better now."

That was apparently the right response, or at least one Dean found acceptable, because the human lit up and clapped her hard on the shoulder with a wide smile. "Glad to hear it."

"How's everything in Heaven?"

Both angel and human turned at the third voice as Sam came out of the bathroom, a washcloth in hand that he was wiping his face with. Dean frowned at him. The droplets on his skin might have passed for the kid washing his face as he often did in the morning, but Dean knew the signs of fear in his brother too well to ignore that Sam had likely woken up sweating bullets and washing his face had nothing to do with a morning routine.

That must have been one hell of a nightmare.

Sam shifted the washcloth to his ear, rubbing at the wet strands of hair that framed his face. He staunchly ignored his brother, instead focusing all his attention on the angel with what he hoped passed for a friendly smile. "You get back okay?"

Whether his smile was passable or not, Castiel did not seem to notice anything wrong with the younger Winchester. At least not enough to answer his questions. "Yes. My brothers did not take my absence as anything worth noting, and my superiors have not inquired as to my whereabouts. All is well."

"Good, I'm glad you didn't run into any trouble." Sam smiled at the angel as he crossed the room over to his own bag and started rifling through for clean clothes. He stepped into his jeans and wrangled a clean shirt over his head. "How'd that other thing go? Your covert mission?"

"Ah," Cas paused, thinking briefly over how to word it. She was pretty sure it went well. Uriel had believed her. More so than she had expected, actually; he'd had proof of it. The reminder immediately made that feeling of danger – not so much danger as just not being safe – swell in her stomach. Castiel forcefully pushed it away, worried about how common it was becoming for her body and grace to behave without her consent. "Well, I believe. I have sought out one of my brother's whom I trust. He is thinking on the matter and we will proceed from there."

"Awesome," Dean announced loudly. Maybe a little too loudly. He was just happy to have Cas back around; he didn't want the details. Didn't want to rock that boat, start that argument again, already flaring in his chest like panic. "Well, we were about to head out for a hunt. You got some time?"

Cas blinked at him, seemingly surprised, but she relaxed from Defcon-stiffness-level-three back down to level one. Dean hadn't realized how stiffly she had been holding herself – mostly because this Cas was so much stiffer to begin with than his Cas. He frowned and made a note to keep an eye on the angel. Something was definitely bothering him.

 _Her._ Whatever.

"I believe I have at least a day before my absence will be noticed." Castiel was also fairly confident Uriel would cover for her now. She was glad she'd approached her brother; having a companion in this effort would be immensely helpful.

"Great!" Dean clapped a hand on her shoulder again, right above her left collarbone, and squeezed lightly. "You can join us."

Castiel glanced at the hand, curious but not negatively so, at the physical contact. Cas didn't understand why, but Dean seemed happy, and so she did not worry about it, either. Her own hand twitched at her side and blue eyes drifted back down to the hunter's chest, where that portion of her grace lay. She could almost feel it. If she could just-

But Dean pulled away before the angel could lift her hand and make that connection once more.

Across the room, Sam had straightened up in surprise at his brother's exclamation, staring at the older Winchester.

"Seriously?" he asked, before seemingly catching himself as Dean sent a pair of raised eyebrows his way and Castiel merely shifted focus. Sam corrected, sending a look his brother's way that the angel couldn't properly read without Angela's assistance, "We, uh…were going to go interview a witness."

"She can come with," Dean answered whatever unspoken question as he sat on the end of one of the mattresses and started pulling his socks on. "And we're not interviewing the lady, Sam. It's a waste of time. Going to the Sherriff as feds will be faster."

"And more dangerous." Sam sounded frustrated, and possibly exasperated. Castiel figured they had had this conversation already, if he understood the younger Winchester's tone correctly. "Posing as FBI isn't necessary. We have a witness, we should start there."

"Whatever, man. We're just gonna end up in the monkey suits when the old lady doesn't pan out." Dean shrugged, pulling on his boots, and nodding towards the angel. "Either way, Cas's gonna need a change of clothes."

Castiel glanced down at her clothed vessel. The jeans, several sizes too large, pinched tight with one of Dean's belts that Sam had driven an extra hole into with a hunting knife, and the worn, black shirt with the logo across the front that meant nothing to the angel. She supposed she could use shoes, though her grace would keep the soles of Angela's feet from damage. Aside from that, she did not see the need for new garments when the ones she currently wore were adequate. Castiel was no expert in human fashion, but looking at Sam and Dean's clothing choices – jeans, boots, t-shirts and an over-shirt (or a green jacket in Dean's case), Castiel did not see much of a difference.

"Yeah, alright," Sam agreed after a moment of appraising the angel, eyes particularly lingering on her bare feet. He didn't sound entirely pleased about it, but Castiel was fairly certain that it had less to do with her and more with his brother. "We can stop for supplies and clothes on the way to Marian Alder's house."

-o-o-o-

Something was up with Sam. Dean could tell. He knew that kid better than he knew himself, and something was definitely bothering him. He looked tired, and he was irritable and jumpy. Especially jumpy. The motel manager knocking on the door had the younger Winchester drawing his gun (and _what the hell_? Why was he armed while they were still in the room and barely even dressed?) which had gotten a hell of a look out of Dean. But Sam had ignored it, keeping the gun drawn, moving behind the door as Dean hollered through it and the matter was resolved without ever opening the thing.

Yeah. Something was definitely up with Sam; it was more than just a lingering nightmare at this point – even a bad one – and Dean was gonna find out what it was just as soon as they got Cas settled into the hunt.

-o-o-o-

Sam was freaking out. Correction, Sam's primal instinct of fight or flight was freaking out while his brain attempted its best to reason with the reaction and failed miserably each time. Pulling a gun on the motel manager had not been great – luckily the guy had been chased off fairly successfully by his brother – but the cat was out of the bag on Sam being not-so-okay.

Because Sam was really not okay. Azazel's final words still rung in his ear, promising an appearance of the yellow-eyed demon that guaranteed to end in a way Sam absolutely could not let happen. And as a demon, the bastard could be anyone. The manager. The maid. The sheriff Dean insisted they go commit a felony in front of. Hell, even the elderly woman Sam was insisting they go interview.

Azazel could be anyone. Anywhere. And Sam had no way to stop him.

So he ignored Dean's look and even more so the loudly cleared throat in his direction (not even attempting to be subtle. Nice, Dean) and instead focused on the perfectly good distraction they had with them in the room.

Castiel.

-o-o-o-

Sam and Dean stood in front of the angel, a pair of shoes in Sam's hands, both pairs of eyes locked on Cas's feet.

"Which do you think will draw more attention?" Sam asked, glancing between his size thirteen shoes and the vessel's (probably size seven – _in women's -_ if they were lucky?) bare feet. Cas looked down at her feet as well, a curious pinch in her brow like she'd never noticed them before. She wiggled her toes against the cheap motel carpet.

"Probably the clown shoes," Dean answered, mostly serious despite the dig. Honestly, his wouldn't be any better, even if they were two sizes smaller. Cas would still be walking around in shoes twice the length of her foot and flopping with every step. Dean didn't imagine the angel had much coordination when it came to things she'd never experienced or even had to think about, ever.

"Barefoot it is." Sam tossed the shoes back onto his bag with a shrug.

Cas was still staring at her feet.

-o-o-o-

As they exited the motel room, Castiel paused at the sight of cars lining the parking lot. Sam and Dean were both loading their bags – one go-bag and one supply bag each – into the trunk of the Impala. The car was faintly familiar to the angel, through no memory of her own. The same source that deciphered Dean Winchester's moods and actions for her, at least to some extent, was now informing her that the vehicle was of some importance to her charge.

She was also a female car and was named Baby.

The angel turned to the brothers, Sam on the far side of the vehicle, already opening his door and sliding into the seat, and Dean with the driver's side door open, staring expectantly at her.

"You coming, or what?"

Castiel's eyes widened as she realized and pondered the question. She eyed the vehicle warily. She had not been intending to go with them, having no interest in traveling at the rate of humans. However, there was still a niggling worry in her human vessel's gut at the thought of leaving her charges, however temporarily.

Still, the vehicle looked….small. She turned her gaze back to Dean. "I will meet you there."

"Dude, we don't even know where we're stopping." Dean climbed into the car as he spoke. "Don't be a baby. Get in."

Sam opened the back door for her, attempting a helpful (if not, _'yeah, I get treated like a child too, welcome to the club'_ ) smile on his face. Castiel tried for an audible sigh, something she understood to be an expression of displeasure, and the angel awkwardly slid into the car. The sound only seemed to amuse her human companions and Castiel frowned in the backseat at yet another failed attempt to mimic human habit. Probably, she thought, because humans made no sense.

-o-o-o-

"This mode of transportation is very slow."

Sam snorted. Dean sent a glare with very little heat (considering the insult someone had just lobbed at his car) towards the rearview mirror which, in turn, passed it along to the angel sitting passenger side in the back seat.

"Shut your pie hole. You'll hurt Baby's feelings."

The angel's brow pinched in confusion. The car did speed up with a rev of the engine, though the incremental increase was dishearteningly minor in regard to Castiel's perception of speed. However, she thought it best not to point that out and instead attempted to shut her 'pie hole' (once Angela, who'd begun to stir through the drive, explained what a pie hole was. Castiel decided against following her suggestion of sticking their tongue out in return.)

(Humans still made no sense, but at least she once more had a guide to deciphering them.)

-o-o-o-

Walmart was the first store they came across fitting their needs, which both brother's agreed would work. Sam was the first one out, blinking in surprise when Castiel was in the backseat one second and standing beside him the next. He glanced surreptitiously around the parking lot to make sure no one had noticed the angel's disappearing act, only a little surprised that no one had.

"You're gonna get flabby, Cas." Dean closed the driver's side door and rounded the Impala to join them as he started towards the impressively large store. Cas followed wordlessly, even as Sam sent his brother an annoyed look for his next words. "Alright, I'll get supplies, you get Cas some new clothes."

" _You_ help Cas get clothes," the younger Winchester corrected pointedly, stopping to snag an errant cart left beside an empty parking spot. "I'll get the supplies."

"Why do I have to take him- _her_ clothes shopping?" Dean complained as Sam wheeled the cart back over to the group. Cas eyed it and its noisy, rattling wheel with some trepidation, obviously regretting her decision to accompany them on this endeavor. "You're better with the girly stuff."

"Grow up, Dean." Sam rolled his eyes, bitchface # 3 (coincidentally known as, _'Grow up, Dean.'_ ) rip-roaring right across his face as the three headed into the store. The growing June warmth and bright sun was replaced by blasting air conditioning and halogens. Castiel was looking less certain of this decision with every step. "She's _your_ angel."

With that, Sam pushed the cart off towards the refrigerated and foods section, effectively ending the debate. Dean made a face after him, unable to voice the rebuke without calling unwanted attention to them. So instead, he grabbed Cas, who was staring at the passing shoppers just a little too intensely, by the elbow and, grumbling, headed for the clothing aisles in the center of the store.

"Thanks for the backup back there." He let go of the angel's arm once they were on a clear path towards the woman's department, and Cas fell in step beside him without protest. Despite the large store and multitude of things and people to look at, the angel kept her eyes straight forward. Woman on a mission, apparently. "You know, you're not _my_ angel."

"On the contrary, given that a chunk of my grace is integrated with your soul, assigning ownership is not that misplaced." Dean almost tripped (okay, so he totally tripped, but he caught himself like a _pro_ and no one saw it, so it didn't _count_ ), sputtering at the angel's words. Because no it most certainly _was_ misplaced. Very misplaced! "However, if it makes you feel better, it could be more accurately said that you are my human."

His shoe made the most god awful, outright obnoxious squeak against Walmart's stupidly shiny floor as Dean stumbled a second time. Cas paused to give him an odd look, like she wasn't confident he was capable of walking on his own. He was _fine,_ damnit.

"No," he choked out adamantly. "No, that's definitely not any better."

Not only because, _no_ , that was absolutely worse, for so many reasons, but also because it turned a couple heads towards them too. He might have been able to write one of them off from his feet trying to make music out of linoleum, but he was pretty sure it was the 'woman' beside him addressing Dean as her human. Like she was his friggin' pet.

Dean squirmed, uncomfortable with the shudder that rippled through him. There was too much in there to unpack and he wanted nothing to do with any of it. The first of which was _'not my kink_ _!_ ' and the last of which was an endless string of things he'd heard people – foe and friend – call Cas in relation to him. His loyal St. Bernard (his _bitch)_ , his pet angel ( _'the one that's, you know, in love with you?'_ ), his guard dog (and again, his _bitch_ ). God, those had all been when Cas was definitely more identifiable as a man. Dean did not want to see what came next if someone called Cas any of those things _now_ (though, mostly that last one.)Yes, he might be old-fashioned in this _one_ thing. Yeah, maybe it was a little sexist. But Dean couldn't help it. Men protected women. Real men _respected_ women. And Cas, for all intents and purposes, looked like _a woman._ Dean's brain, trained by a hardass, Midwestern marine and a whole lot of black and white Hollywood (actually, yeah, Dean could see where the definitely sexist thread was coming from now…) wasn't going to handle Cas getting called anything but an angel in his- her current state. There'd be broken noses and blood involved. Dean's, probably, if the punch he'd throw was against anything but another human.

So, yeah. Let the universe and everyone in it call Castiel his angel. He had a new perspective on how not-that-bad it was.

"Let's just find you something to wear," Dean muttered, turning away from her and pushing into the aisles upon aisles of clothing. He put his entire focus into that task, beating back the redness in his face and the troubling thoughts in his head. The two made their way towards the clothing designed for business wear and Dean selected the jacket portion of the first pantsuit he saw that said 'fed'. "You know what size Angela is by chance?"

Cas tilted her head to the side, that thick hair falling off her shoulder as her eyes went just a little unfocused. Dean raised his eyebrows, wondering if Cas was like…measuring herself somehow. Could she do that? She could tell him her temperature, heart rate, blood alcohol level, and a million other things about that body he did not need to know (oh, god, he wasn't going down that train of thought. _Abort, abort, abort!_ ). Measurements seemed like a stretch though.

So when the angel rattled off numbers that meant nothing to Dean, but didn't match what was currently in his hand, he set the hanger back on the rack and started searching for a jacket that did. "You get that from her subconscious or you got a mental ruler in there with you?"

There was that head tilt again. Cas didn't know what he was asking. Dean opened his mouth to clarify something he probably shouldn't be asking to start with (but damnit, he was curious) when the angel responded, "Angela told me her size."

The hunter blinked at that. "Wait, what?"

"I asked her preferred clothing size, and she indicated pants size eight, shirts-"

Dean shook his head. "No, I got that. You mean she's awake in there?"

He remembered Jimmy telling them what it had been like serving as a vessel. How Cas had kept him asleep for most of it, but even then, bits had leaked through. And being awake had been… Well, it certainly hadn't sounded pleasant.

"She requested it." Cas dipped her head slightly, as though she had her own opinions on the matter but Dean knew she wouldn't be voicing them. "Her comatose state was unsatisfactory."

Dean just stared, suit jacket completely forgotten about. "She's been awake the _whole time?_ "

Cas returned his gaze for a moment, before those blue eyes dropped down his body and up it again (lingering for just a moment too long on his chest, hand twitching by her side), not unlike the first night back at Bobby's. Suddenly, Dean was blushing bright friggin' red, and damnit, he so did not need this – _this_ being an angel and _his best friend_ checking him out! – right now.

"Did she just do that or did you?" he asked, and yeah, okay, that might have sounded a _little_ paranoid, but his own reaction to the woman hadn't exactly been _subtle_ when Cas first showed up. This was so not cool!

That head tilted again and there was something in those blue eyes – a hint of the amusement he knew Cas would one day learn to show in earnest – that had Dean's eyes narrowing and gave him the distinct urge to hit the guy. Er, girl. Okay, so maybe not _hit…_

"I am in full control of this body. However, she has been helping me respond to social situations more aptly."

Dean swore under his breath. Full body scans were not _aptly_. They were _wrongly,_ is what they were. "That's why you've been like that. Using idioms and stuff."

Stuff like _checking people the hell out!_ Dean shoved the flare of jealousy (not jealousy, damnit. _Concern_ ) so far down he was pretty sure his feet were ringing with it.

Not _people_ , just _Dean._

' _It had better be 'just Dean' or I'm gonna-'_

For good measure, he shoved a little harder and a little more downward.

"They are confusing and rarely make sense," Cas continued, apparently oblivious to the panic attack (midlife crisis? Anxiety attack? Complete and utter mental breakdown?) Dean was suffering. And yup, there was the angel Dean knew. "But Angela has been explaining them to me."

"And she's-" Dean hesitated, managing a pretty decent exterior (if not for the heavy blush and clear panic) considering his internal implosion. Weighing his words with a cautious look at his friend, he fumbled with a weak, "She's alright in there?"

There was another pause – what Dean realized was the two of them likely talking – before Cas nodded. The corner of her lip twitched like she was going for a smile, but it didn't fully form. "She is. It is not entirely pleasant, but she is coping."

"Alright then," the hunter breathed out, turning back to the jacket, eyes clearly saying just how weird their lives were even if his lips remained tightly pressed together.

"She says to thank you for the concern."

Dean cleared his throat. God, this was awkward. "Uh, no problem. Sorry for the…uh…you know…"

The boner? The multiple boners? The staring? The complete and utter lack of control over a single inch of his bodily reactions when it came to this woman?

Yeah. Any of the above, really.

God, he was blushing like a teenage girl. So not cool. None of this was cool! This was the damn right opposite of _cool_! It was like being caught as a voyeur, and considering Dean had never had to sneak peeks at women to get what he wanted, now he just felt gross.

"She says it's okay. You have a cute butt."

Dean missed the rack with the hanger, fumbled the miss, and then managed to grab onto the metal with a damn near desperate grip that kept him from crashing into it.

Those words, in Cas's monotone (but still hot-as-hell) deep, raspy voice had him clearing his throat because, again, _awkward._ That was his best friend. His _male_ best friend, deadpan telling him his ass was hot. God damnit, Dean couldn't even. Couldn't even like a friggin' teenage girl.

Angela Anne Garrett was the devil. That's what she was.

He set the jacket back on the rack of clothes _gently_ , now well and truly beet red (turnabout is fair play, he supposed) and pulled out – finally – the size she had indicated. The hunter all but shoved it into the angel's arms and followed it with the matching pants.

"Here," he muttered, still fighting back that stupid redness in his face. "Let's just get you a shirt so we can leave and never mention any of this again."

"Now she is laughing."

Dean groaned, grabbed Cas by the elbow once more, and hauled her two racks over to some blouses that he supposed looked like what you might wear under a suit jacket.

"Angela would also like me to remind you that boxers will not go with these pants, and those shirts will definitely show our current state of…" Cas's brows pinched together and that head tilt was back. She pushed the clothes under one arm so she could raise both hands to chest-level and curl her fingers into bunny ears. "…'bra-less-ness.'"

Dean choking on his own spit was entirely the fault of the store (somehow). As was the floor that managed to trip him for a third time that day, and the half dozen shirts he knocked down in his moment of grace.

"She is laughing again."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns** : I will try to get you all another chapter next week, but this stupid eye strain is kiiilling me and I have been struggling to write this batch of chapters. I've been feeling increasingly distressed over the fact that we're 20+ chapters into Season 2 and I haven't actually gotten us to season 2 yet -_- It's definitely stressing me out and making me feel like I should be writing *those* episodes instead of this incredible tangent I've gotten us all on. My own patience with this lengthy story apparently wore out/turned around to bite me in the butt._

 _Although, even with all that completely needless stress, I can't deny this chapter was incredibly entertaining to write :D Hopefully Dean's mental crisis wasn't so tangent-y that you all got lost. It *was* pretty all over the place._

 _ **-Uriel** : I wanted to add a quick little note here about something that came up a lot in the feedback for last chapter that I was not expecting, and that was how many of you were angry at me for making you like Uriel (not the anger, that's totally fair ;) Truth is, I wasn't trying to make you all like him, but I'm glad that's what came across! See, I do this silly little thing where I read a fanfic with a cool idea and think, 'Wow, I like that! I'm going to make that my new headcannon!' And I am (apparently) intelligent enough to know it's *head*cannon and not show-cannon, but I am apparently not smart enough to realize that it is not now magically *everyone's* headcannon. So I started reading reviews being like, 'Whut? But...but...Uriel was kinda likeable in that one story. He had more depth in that story. Didn't everyone read that story and adopt that as their new headcannon? I'm sure there was a memo about it somewhere around here...'_

 _:P So in conclusion, I'm a dork, but I'm glad that head-cannon was coming across and, oh yeah, I owe some author-brilliance accreditation! The story that influenced my Uriel head-canon is called "The Road From Sodom" by the talented Misato._


	56. Season 2: Chapter 23

_**-A/Ns** : I apologize for the surprisingly late chapter, both by a week and by a day. I've been very stressed out lately and very busy; gave myself too many projects, have finished almost none of them, and am currently having panic attacks about all of them. Fun times!_

 _ **-Reviews:** Thank you for your continued support last chapter. I appreciate it more than words can convey! I'm so sorry I wasn't able to get you a chapter last week despite your support and wonderful awesome encouraging words. There should have been more commas in that last sentence..._

 _ **-Quality Warning:** Ugh, another chapter not quite up to par. So...I massively fell behind in writing and didn't even finish this chapter until Sunday (today) afternoon when my roommate had to pick me up off the kitchen floor where I was curled up in a ball sobbing because I'm a mess who ruined the resin-casting of a tabletop for the third time in just as many days (I hate this project so much, guys, and I did it all entirely to myself by thinking I could build myself a craft table -_-), pushed me into the shower cuz it's my happy place where I get all my best ideas (don't ask) and then shoved my laptop into my hands and kicked me out the door to go find a nice place to hermit and write. So...y'all have a chapter today because my roommate's a boss. But it's not a great chapter because I'm still a definite basket case and forced the last third into existence by sheer force of will. I'm not happy about it, but you guys have already waited two weeks and I can't keep stalling. So, please take the second half of this chapter with a grain of salt. It's not what it should be but I'll get back to my old self eventually (once this friggin' mother friggin' god damn friggin' friggin' crap on a cracker desk is done once and for all)_

 _(P.S. I dove head first into this project to avoid my phone and laptop and all other screens to give my eyes a chance to heal. Bad. Friggin'. Call. I'll take my eye strain and several hundred dollars back, please.)_

 ** _-Chapter Warnings:_** _Sam's grocery shopping, Azazel's helping out ('May I suggest this fine bottle of 1942 Sauvingon Blood, good sir? A most excellent year indeed. Great legs.'), Dean's making leaps and bounds in lady's fashion choices (next stop, RuPaul's drag show!) and despite all the fun we're having, everyone's getting just a tad bit testy this morning._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 23

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam grabbed a six pack of beer out of the cooler section of the store and set it in the cart, mentally going through the rest of the list of items they should pick up since they were on a supply run. The usual road trip snacks to get them through when diners weren't open or available. Beer. A couple bottles of water for Sam (Dean refused to touch the stuff for hydration purposes unless absolutely necessary). They needed new bandages and stitching thread after that ghost in Iowa and the werewolf case that had followed after.

The hunter pushed the cart through the rest of the refrigerated aisle, back towards the bulk of the store and other supplies. The sudden, unexpected chill that crawled up his spine caused his feet to slow and the cart drifted to a stop next to the ciders. Someone was watching him. He could feel it, like ants crawling across his skin, hair standing up along the nape of his neck. Sam took a breath, making a show of looking at the selection of bottles as he tried to parse the source.

Eventually, the hunter used his angle to check just over his shoulder, but the aisle was empty. It was fairly early in the morning for the Walmart to have much customer base, and he was the only one in the section. Still, the ants persisted. His breath came out in a shaky release, and the hunter shivered. Was it colder? Or was it just the cooling units? They were the open kind – no doors, like with the freezer section – and the aisle had several degrees cooler than the rest of the store long before Sam got the sensation of someone watching him.

He didn't realize how afraid he really was until he started pushing the cart forward again, knuckles white around the plastic grip. He dealt with danger almost every day of his life – at least every week, case to case that he and his brother found – and yet he knew if he lifted his hands from their death-grip on the cart, they would be trembling. Sam couldn't shake Azazel's voice in his head, the moonlight coming through the windows in a parody of what had started as a good dream, the demon's fingers digging into his cheek and jaw.

His hands were shaking even on the cart now, and the hunter sped up and rounded the corner.

Right into somebody.

The man barely dodged to the side, managing to miss Sam's cart by a scant inch, even as the young Winchester pulled back at the sudden appearance. His breath hitched in his throat as he jerked to the side at the sudden stop, ramming the cart right into a display. Chips rained down on the floor as the metal rack wobbled on impact.

"Whoa, sorry, there," the man – middle-aged, Caucasian, wearing a pair of running pants and a wind breaker – said as he righted the last of the movement of Sam's cart with a tight grip to the metal grating.

Sam was breathing hard, brain yelling at him to get a grip, as he looked towards the gentleman, intent to apologize. He was picking up one of the bags of chips and handing it over to the hunter when Sam froze.

His eyes were yellow.

The younger Winchester scrambled back, hitting the shelves next to the chip display as he got as far as possible from the yellow-eyed man as quickly as possible. He was lucky he didn't knock anything else over. The guy was giving him a worried (and apprehensive) look from a pair of perfectly normal, _human_ , brown eyes.

"Uh…okay…" The guy set the chips back on the display himself, hedging around Sam's cart and away from the hunter as he side-eyed him cautiously. "Sorry for the…er…scare, there. Have a- have a good day."

The customer scurried off, casting another uncertain look over his shoulder at Sam, who was now feeling like a complete idiot. He forced his chest to stop heaving ( _'Get a grip!'_ ) and he pushed off the shelf with fierce internal derision.

Get a grip, indeed.

Sam moved the cart out of the way, scooping up the rest of the fallen products and putting them back on the rack. He glanced down the way the man had disappeared again, now quite certain he'd imagined the whole thing, but not yet able to calm his racing heart entirely enough to be sure. The man was gone (who could blame him?) and the rest of the section of groceries was fairly empty. Neither of the two other shoppers that he could see were paying him any heed.

Sam swallowed. He hadn't realized how _alone_ he was since parting ways with Dean and Castiel. Vulnerable. Sam swallowed again against the reflexive fear of Azazel's threat.

 _'Be seeing you real soon, now, tiger.'_

This was what the demon wanted. To mess with his head, and it was working.

The brunette straightened back up, casting another quick glance around him. Gripping the cart, he forcefully shook off that feeling of being watched ( _'You're being paranoid, Sam_ ') and quickly moved towards the pharmacy section where he could pick up those bandages. He tried not to think about the relief it would be to meet back up with his brother and his angel as soon as possible.

-o-o-o-

Between Dean and Angela, they managed to get Cas into a pant suit and blouse with surprisingly little hassle. The employee manning the changing rooms eyed Castiel's bare feet with the kind of raised brow that suggested she dealt with this shit all the time, and Dean ushered the angel into the small stall before anything more could come of it. He got more of a look from the attendant for joining Cas in the small room than anything else.

"Uh…do you…need…?" Dean, standing in the open stall doorway, gestured hopelessly to the clothes they'd gathered, undergarments included (and boy, had he faced the opposite direction while Angela helped Cas pick out a simple bra and set of underwear, pretending there was nothing interesting (like sizing or lace or _see-through-ness_ ) happening behind him).

Castiel, glancing first at the clothes and then the human, needing it spelled out for her apparently, eventually shook her head. "Angela will guide me through it."

The relief on Dean's face was apparently enough to get the devil woman laughing again.

While the two of them disappeared into the dressing room, Dean wandered back into the aisle of clothing (giving the attendant a look as good as he'd gotten from the bored teenager). The hunter mulled about listlessly, picking at the fabrics as he brushed by them. He was idly looking through the racks of clothes closest to the stalls – bored out of his mind and my god, how did men go shopping with their significant others without committing suicide?! – when he spotted it. It was a woman's jacket, light and probably meant to be a raincoat. It wasn't the right style or cut or even length.

But it was the exact right color of tan.

The man from the future couldn't help it. He crossed the aisle to pull the item and its hangar off the rack and stare at it. It was slimmer than Cas's original trench – cut for a woman with a bit more flair than that ugly thing the angel had worn everywhere.

Dean glanced behind him at the stall where Cas was getting dressed. He looked back to the garment, gave it about three seconds more consideration, and folded it over his arm. Feds wore raincoats all the time. This was part of the costume. That was all.

Cas came out several minutes later and Dean was honestly impressed. Angela cleaned up nice (not that she'd needed it ( _damnit, no, stop thinking about the woman's looks, Dean))._ She looked like a proper business woman, in faintly pinstriped slacks and a matching jacket, a muted rose-colored blouse with some weird neck tie thingy at the top (shut up, fashion was not Dean's thing. You're lucky you got anything more than general colors). She looked nice. Certainly nice enough to pass for a fed. Well, except for the bare feet.

"Here." Dean held out the coat, gesturing with his chin to the approaching angel. "Put that on and we'll get you shoes."

"Is this a customary garment for females?" Castiel took the jacket, confused as to why she would need an extra article to keep her dry or warm when her grace would do both as was needed. Angela had no wisdom on the coat either.

(In actuality, she totally did, but she was keeping it to herself. Cas still appeared to her as a trench-coat wearing angel in fuzzy slippers, after all. She wasn't an idiot; she could see the similarities to this coat now. Not to mention her growing suspicion that there was a teddy bear's heart of gold under all that gruff worn like armor by the man standing in front of her.)

"Uh…yeah. Let's go with that." Dean cleared his throat, face – still red from earlier – now turning exasperated. "Just put it on, will ya."

Despite not understanding the request (demand?), Castiel slipped her arms through the cloth and adjusted the garment until it felt comfortable. Castiel had never contemplated clothing before, both the look of it and the feel. It was… a necessary nuisance, she concluded. Once she'd finished with the garment, she stood, staring at the hunter who was staring at her. He looked quite serious, something dark on his face, but not necessarily bad. Castiel could not explain it.

Dean nodded and, just like that, the look was gone. "Alright, let's find you some shoes."

-o-o-o-

When they met back up with Sam near the registers, Dean immediately noticed that whatever was going on with his brother, it had gotten worse since they split up. The hunter did a quick, subtle surveillance of the store around them, looking for suspect activity that might have stirred up whatever Sam dreamt about last night.

He was starting to suspect exactly what it was (and in reality, was looking for demons with his quick glance around), but he wouldn't know until he got Sammy alone long enough to make him fess up.

The younger Winchester did an adamant job of stowing it, instead eyeing Castiel's new outfit (which Dean had told her to just wear to the register, since he did not wanna deal with stopping somewhere again for her to change or, heaven forbid, have her get naked in the back seat and have to live with _that_ image tormenting his brain every time he even so much as looked at his baby's backdoors). Dean stood there like the dutiful mule all men on shopping trips were apparently doomed to be, holding an empty shoebox and torn off tags, soon to pull out his wallet to pay for it all.

Dean didn't know how normal people did it. Those poor fools.

Sam gave an approving nod over the clothing choices in general, though he spared an odd look and raised eyebrows for the coat. It was sort of a knowing look in Dean's direction (couldn't get much past that kid), but mostly amused by the time he directed it back towards the angel. The coat was…well, it wasn't ugly, but it wasn't exactly flattering either. More of a… female Tax Accountant of the Lord. Sam didn't say anything, reasonably sure why his brother had selected it (and even more sure that Cas didn't know why she was wearing it).

"You look nice, Castiel," Sam said instead, a smile ready for the angel as Cas turned away from the racks of colorful candy and loud magazines.

"Thank you, Sam." She cast a glance down her body again, then gave a satisfactory nod. "If this will help me pass as human, I appreciate the assistance."

"You know what would help you pass as human?" Dean grumbled from behind them, voice low and growly. Cas turned with earnest eyes and Sam sent an ugly look towards his brother, even if he already knew what he was going to say and he did have a point. "Not saying it aloud around a bunch of _humans_."

The angel seemed to realize her mistake, glancing around less than subtly to notice several people well within hearing range of them. A couple were casting furtive glances in their direction.

"Yes, I suppose that would be wise." Even though she was agreeing, the angel was also busy having a stare down with one of the more blatant eavesdropper. Dean, uncomfortable with the way the guy was staring at her, cut in between them, effectively ending the staring contest. Castiel's blue eyes left the weird dude's and locked on Dean, oblivious to what had just happened. "I will endeavor to…act more…appropriately in public."

"Don't worry about it, Castiel." Sam offered that smile again, not so oblivious to what had just happened and giving his brother a third judgmental side-long look in just about as many minutes. At least, it sure looked judgmental from Dean's perspective. "You'll get the hang of it. It just takes practice."

Dean was opening his mouth to tell his brother just how much help Cas had in that department, from his _very much awake_ devil lady vessel, when he noticed the angel busy staring at his chest again. The hunter stopped mid word to stare right back at Cas, a frown pulling at his eyebrows because, _seriously?_ What was going on with him- her? The intense look (god, was it more intense than usual? Was that even possible?) made Dean want to rub protectively at his sternum.

Castiel's hand moved by her side, reaching up. It was the second time that morning Dean had noticed.

"What is it with you today?" he asked, only a little accusatorily, and caught Castiel's eye as the angel snapped her head back up. "I got something on my shirt, or what?"

Castiel opened her mouth to respond (was that a guilty look behind that stoic expression?) when a lady behind them in line suddenly bumped into Sam, a mumbled _'excuse me'_ coming out about the same time she reached past him to grab a soda from the small fridge beside him. Her skin brushed his, the fridge door hit his arm as it popped open, and the beanstalk of a man just about jumped out of his skin scrambling away from her in a dictionary definition of over-reacting.

(Okay, that was an exaggeration, even Dean could admit. His kid brother didn't jump out of his skin. But for a trained hunter like Sammy in just about the most normal place you could be on earth (well… normal except for the way some of the patrons dressed (normal people, man. They were the real scare (where were we? Oh right,))) that knee-jerk reaction might as well have been a six foot jump for the kid.)

Jesus, what was it with everyone around him acting weird today?

Sam recovered quickly and cast a shaky smile the woman's direction. The doe-eyed lady just blinked, stunned from the extreme reaction, hand around a bottle of Pepsi still in the fridge. Both embarrassed and confused, she retreated back to her place in line with a quiet apology. Feeling like an idiot for scaring the poor girl just about as badly as she'd scared him, and over a _soda,_ the younger Winchester turned back to Cas. He planned on resuming their earlier conversation (which was actually a counter attack to avoid any conversation about that little freak out he'd just had). Unfortunately for him, Cas beat him to it.

"Are you alright, Sam?" The angel was staring at him in that soul-piercing way, and given what Dean had told him, Cas probably was staring at his soul.

Sam swallowed, chasing away dark thoughts of what the angel would find there. "I'm fine. Just tired." Castiel looked like she might argue that (good luck, because it was the truth, even if Sam wasn't ready to go into details on _why_ he was so tired) and Sam decided to head that conversation off too. "I didn't sleep well last night, is all."

The angel blinked, processed that (she sometimes forgot that humans needed things like sleep, as she had no obligatory needs to relate to), and accepted it. Dean didn't though. The older Winchester was still staring at his brother. He wasn't so easily fooled. Something was definitely up, and it had just gone from an orange alert to pure red.

The Walmart checkout line wasn't the place to bring it up, but now the car was going to be good enough.

-o-o-o-

As Sam slid into the passenger side of the Impala – Castiel climbing once more into the back, the discontent look back on her face as she again submitted to inferior human transportation, and Dean in the driver's seat – the youngest Winchester tucked his hands beneath his legs to…. He didn't know. Hide them? Stop the trembling?

One dream and he was a quivering mess. A single whiff of copper that his brain had supplied entirely on its own. It was as infuriating as it was disheartening. God, it had just been a dream. What on earth was he going to do if he had to face the real thing again? And it was coming. He knew it was. Azazel wasn't the type to bluff. Sure, he took sadistic pleasure in messing with Sam's head, but that didn't mean he was lying about his threat. He could be around every next bend, waiting with that damned blood, to either force down Sam's throat or blackmail him into it with one threat or another.

Sam hadn't realized how truly terrified he had been until he'd split up from his brother and Cas at the store. Not until he'd ran into that random guy and lost the tentative control he'd had on his primed and terrified imagination. The fear that gripped him, even after the completely nonthreatening human had been nice enough to help clean up the mess he'd made, was overwhelming.

Hence, the shaking hands. At least, Sam hoped that was the cause of the tremors running through his fingers, and not the promise of the blood he knew he, on his worst days, still tasted on his tongue. Maybe even craved.

"Alright, spill," Dean announced less than a second after Castiel had closed the rear door. The angel blinked at him from the backseat, uncertainty painted across her face as the colloquialism she did not know.

He wasn't looking at her, though, and Sam fidgeted in the passenger seat.

"Later."

"Nope." Dean shook his head, keys still in hand and clearly in no rush to go anywhere, even though they had a case and a witness waiting on them. "What's going on? You almost took out half the candy rack back there, Sasquatch. What's up with you?"

Sam sighed, rubbing at his eyes. They were dry, gritty, and burning, and had been since he'd woken up. "I'm serious, Dean. Later."

His brother stared at him hard for a moment before he twisted around to look at the angel in the back seat. "Cas, can you give us a minute?"

Castiel looked perplexed and Sam made an aggravated noise in the back of his throat.

"Dean-"

"Alone," the hunter added in an attempt to clarify, cutting Sam off in the same breath. It worked, as Cas tilted her head minutely, blue eyes glancing between the two brothers, and then gave a single nod.

"Of course." She disappeared with the faint sound of a wingbeat. It took Sam a second to spot where she reappeared, outside of the car and about twenty feet away. Like a woman in a suit and trench coat (in the middle of summer) standing stiff and utterly unmoving in the middle of a parking lot, trying not to pay attention to the car with her charges in it wasn't awkward and noticeable as hell. The younger Winchester wondered how long it would take before people started steering clear.

"Alright, now spill."

An aggravated sigh passed his lips and he rubbed at his eyes again, wondering if the developing headache was from his brother, his lack of sleep, or his skyrocketing blood pressure and overall anxiety level. Or maybe it was entirely in his head, a placebo effect of having demon blood waved in front of his face.

"Cas wasn't the reason I didn't want to talk about this, you know."

Dean didn't give even an inch. "Tough. Spill."

His aggravation was ratcheting quickly up to anger and Sam wasn't prepared to deal with his fiery temper on top of everything else. "Not right now. I'm not- I can't…" The young hunter gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. Dean let him without comment. "Just not right now, alright?"

His brother continued to stare, but the fact that he wasn't immediately pushing back meant Sam was probably going to get his way on this. Probably.

"Is it world ending?"

Sam wasn't entirely sure. In a way, yes. Right this instance? No… But he couldn't help the way his eyes darted around the parking lot, looking for pale skin and yellow eyes. Dean didn't miss it, but, surprisingly, he didn't flag it, either.

"It's Azazel," the younger Winchester confessed with a world-weary sigh. God, he felt it, down to his bones. "It was just a dream, Dean."

Until the moment that it wasn't, at least. He knew he needed to tell his brother about the demon's threat – this was not the sort of thing he could afford to hide for long – but it wasn't as though there was much Dean could do about it in the meantime. If there was a way to keep a demon that powerful away from him, they'd have done it already.

"Was it?" Dean's voice was accusatory, but didn't carry much heat. More concern than anything. "Cuz you're definitely acting like it's more, Sammy."

"Look, just…later, okay? I need to…" Not think about it. No, Sam would rather forget it ever happened all together. To stop expecting the demon to be around every corner, jar in hand and crimson liquid sloshing just behind that thin layer of glass-

"Time. I need time," Sam finished a little shakily, shoving off those thoughts and the faint echoes of the dream which, no, he wasn't sure was just a dream. Was pretty sure it wasn't. And wasn't that the story of his life, lately. "I'm not like you, Dean, alright? I haven't seen this all before, I don't know how it works out!"

Dean fell silent at the outburst Sam definitely hadn't intended to let out. He was tired. Tired, and apparently terrified, which was humiliating as it was exhausting. The younger Winchester pinched at the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, trying to force back the tiredness and the headache that came with it. "Let's finish the hunt. Then we'll- uh, we can talk about it then."

"…Alright." Dean didn't look happy – and what a role reversal for the older Winchester to be the one pushing for a share session – but he didn't fight back, and Sam was grateful (if not thoroughly surprised). It was clear the older of the two wasn't happy about it, but Dean just pushed open the driver side door to go fetch Cas and finish this hunt so Sammy wouldn't have any more excuses to hide behind.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Sam interrupted his movements, and Dean paused before he was fully out of the car. "Bringing Cas on a case?"

The man from the future frowned sharply at the total change of topic, pulling his head back. "What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing. She's just…"

"Just what?" Dean sat back down on the seat, staring expectantly at his brother. If he hadn't just given Sam his way and not insisted they talk about whatever the hell was bugging him – and yeah, Azazel showing up in his dream seemed like a pretty friggin' big deal (definitely something they should be _talking about_ ) – Dean would have thought his brother was bringing up Cas as a distraction.

Maybe he was. Or maybe he was just pissy over that dream of his. He was entitled, Dean figured, able to hazard a guess as to what the yellow eyed demon had to say to his baby bro.

He was going to enjoy gunning that bastard down a second time.

Sam was rolling his eyes, bitchface all huffy. "Does she even know how?"

Dean scoffed immediately. If that was Sammy's big concern, he had a hell of a surprise coming to him. "Trust me, Sammy. She's good to go. Just you wait; Cas makes hunting _easy_."

-o-o-o-

Well, she certainly didn't make interviewing witnesses easy. The three 'FBI agents' left Mrs. Alder's house to the sound of the door being slammed purposefully behind them and quickly locked. Yeah, they probably needed to leave before the woman decided to call the cops.

Sam leveled a look his brother's way – he'd probably call it a bitchface, but it was deserved – and Dean rolled his eyes, though the fidgety way he cracked his neck afterward suggested at least some level of fault on his behalf.

"Alright, so, we'll leave Cas behind on the next interview."

It was Sam's turn to roll his eyes. ' _You think?!'_

"I do not understand," Castiel interrupted the two, standing between them, which still gave Sam plenty of freedom to glare at his brother over Angela's head. "What did I say?"

Dean bit back the retort that immediately came to mind ( _'Oh, really?_ Now _you're devil lady doesn't wanna help you decipher humanity?'_ ) and instead rubbed the back of his neck with a sigh. He needed a hot shower and a night on a better bed than their current accommodations. "Generally, mentioning that someone's granddaughter might have turned into a 'savage vengeful spirit' ain't exactly normal human behavior, Cas."

The angel frowned, both at the annoyance in his tone and the words themselves. "It was the truth of the situation."

"It was a little harsh," Sam offered helpfully, a tight lip smile failing to lighten the mood as they climbed into the Impala. "And most humans don't know about the supernatural. They won't believe you when you bring it up."

"That would explain why she insisted we were 'crazy.'"

Dean shot a glare into the rear view mirror as they settled into the car. "Alright, enough with the air quotes, Cas. Point is, we got nothing out of the old bag." He reached past Sam's grasshopper legs to pull open the glove box and rifle through their badges, tossing the FBI ones to Sam. "Time for Plan B. Which should have been Plan A all along."

Sam didn't even pull a bitchface, resisting the fight his brother clearly wanted to pick. Turned out, they were both pretty pissy today. Sam's lack of sleep was his excuse. Dean's fallback was his certainty that Sam ought to be spilling his every fear to him. Like Dean had any right to bitch him out about keeping secrets.

And it wasn't a secret. He just… needed time to figure it out for himself, first. Whatever 'it' was.

"Maybe if you hadn't written Mrs. Alder off to start with, she might have had something useful to tell us." Okay, so maybe he wasn't resisting the fight all that hard. To be honest, he could probably use the venting. Although, Sam knew well enough that he wasn't his brother. Getting into it with Dean only ever escalated his anger; it wasn't the release that it was for the older Winchester.

"Written her off?" Dean argued back immediately, a glare across his features. He gestured emphatically around them before starting the Impala's engine. "We're here, aren't we? We tried, and she was useless, Sammy."

Sam was biting out the words before he could stop himself. "She wouldn't have been useless if _your_ angel hadn't-"

"Whoa, hey!" Dean cut him off, and Sam bit his tongue, already knowing he'd crossed the line, even if it was a small one. This wasn't Cas's fault, and both of the humans in the car knew it. "I know he's new to this whole thing-"

"She, Dean."

" _Whatever_." Dean practically yelled it, and damnit, he was _trying_ , alright? "You're seriously gonna take your pissy-ness off on the angel?"

There was a light throat clearing from behind them – hesitant and kinda gargle-y, like the owner didn't actually know what she was doing – and Castiel, staring at both of them with a look that definitely came from a Warrior of God, said, "I can speak for myself."

Dean immediately leveled his pointer finger at her, shaking his head. "Uh, no. No more talking for you. You are banned from talking."

Cas's brow pinched in a way that screamed affronted angel, but Dean turned away from it only to find Sam staring at him with a similar – although far more judgey – look.

"What?"

Sam's deadpan eyebrows said it all, but just in case Dean hadn't gotten the message, the Samsquatch verbalized it: "Nice, Dean."

"What- will you just- will _everyone_ just calm the hell down?" Now he was definitely yelling. Damnit, why were they always yelling? "Jesus! It's like everyone woke up on the wrong side of the friggin' bed!"

"I did not wake up in a bed this morning," Castiel clarified and, given the look on her face, she was definitely speaking just to prove that she could do so and would continue to do so as much as she damn well pleased. The sass was practically palatable. "Angels do not sleep: in beds or otherwise."

Dean was torn between glaring at the passenger in his back seat or rolling his eyes. Attempting to do both kind of gave him a headache. "Yeah, well, you sure flew outta the wrong side of Heaven, then."

Cas went quiet, likely having Angela explain the meaning of the words, but whatever understanding the angel came to, it didn't garner a response, apparently. Dean let the silence between the three of them hang a moment longer before he put Baby into drive and pulled away from the curb, pointing them in the direction of the Sheriff's office.

-o-o-o-

Castiel sat in the backseat of the slow-moving vehicle and watched the world pass by the window.

 _"Castiel?"_ Angel's voice was soft. Not timid like Jimmy's had been, but cautious all the same. _"You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to, but… what made you leave Heaven this morning?"_

She could sense the anxiety still flowing off the angel, and even more so the shame and confusion that followed. Dean's words, once Angela had explained the meaning of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, had seemingly resonated with the angel in a way that only made that shame worse. Whatever had chased Castiel out of his home that morning, he was embarrassed by how he had reacted to it.

 _"I would rather not speak of it,"_ Castiel responded between their wedged essences, rather than aloud in the small car.

Angela chewed on her lip – a leftover habit from being alive that didn't seem to stop now that she didn't have an actual body – and nodded. Castiel could probably use some time alone, actually, and she was feeling pretty wiped from the last couple hours of possession.

 _"How about I take a nap for a while,"_ she offered, tone still soft, " _if that's okay?_ "

 _"Of course,_ " Castiel answered, only feeling a little guilty at the feeling of relief that came with the humans' offer. The angel returned her to Aruba and the memory of her fiancé, and went back to staring at the passing human world.

-o-o-o-

Dean pulled up out of the Sheriff's building, put the car into park, and turned to face his brother and backseat passenger. "Alright, look. This is not me benching either of you…"

The man from the future held up a hand to stop his brother, who was already opening his mouth to argue. "You wanna come, then come. But I think you should stay. Walk it off or sit it off, whatever. I can get in, get what we need, and be out in ten minutes. We don't need a Mexican jumping bean knocking over more candy displays or…"

Dean slid his eyes over to the angel, who was regarding him with an expressionless face. The hunter sighed, running a hand down his face tiredly. This day had started out so well, damnit. "Just…I do the talking if you come, okay, Cas?"

Sam huffed, sitting back against the corner where the seat met the door. He looked out the window, towards the quiet police station, and silently mulled it over. The truth was, he probably should stay. _Not_ because Dean had a point (okay, maybe Dean had a small point) but because he'd wanted to call Jess since he woke up from that terrible dream. He knew she was safe, knew she was okay, but he still couldn't shake the need to hear her say it. Not after Yellow Eyes had threatened her like that.

If Cas went with Dean, which she seemed rearing to do if that Warrior of God look had anything to say about it, then he'd have a minute alone to make that call. So he slumped against the door paneling and gave his brother a glare. A conciliatory glare, maybe, but Sam made sure to keep it a glare. They were, after all, having a pissing match and Sam was no quitter.

Dean spared him a momentary look that ended with an approving node before he climbed out of the car. Castiel disappeared from the backseat, reappearing on the sidewalk as Dean moved around the car to join him.

Sam watched them disappear into the building before pulling out his cell.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns:**_ _So the last third of this chapter is not my favorite, but I just flat out ran out of time to do better. Hopefully, as in the past, you all won't feel it too much._

 _ **Up Next:**_ _Sam and Jess have one of their chats, as few and far in between as they are growing. Cas gets kicked out of the Sheriff's office, Dean has to deal with babysitting brothers and angels, and Sam has a question or two to ask Cas about dream-walking demons…_

 _ **Up Next Timing**_ _: I am hoping to resume a weekly post, but I've just been really struggling lately and I was hard pressed to write a chapter in a week when I was in a good mindset. This is the first time I've ever actually run out of chapters when it comes time to post and I'm frankly embarrassed by it. I think I'm in one of my funks, and it's a stupid time for it to happen, damnit. I'll keep working on the story (no fear there; I have way too many fun things planned to give up now!) but I may end up slowing down some until this passes._

 _Thanks for sticking with me and for your understanding, guys. I really appreciate it. There's still tons to come and we're (I'm) not done yet! :)_

 _*author goes back to grumbling about a desk and resin casting and omg so much money I shoulda just bought a damn craft tableforallthetimeandtroublethisiscostingmewhatwasIthinking?!*_


	57. Season 2: Chapter 24

_**-A/Ns** : I apologize for the lengthy delay in getting you this next installment. As warned, I have indeed slowed way down in writing as I struggle with some tough times. I've definitely had a bit of a battle when it came to writing these next few chapters, so thanks for baring with me._

 _ **-Reviews:** Thank you for your continued support last chapter and even more so your support for me and my current state of mental and emotional heatlh. Seriously, so many of you spoke up and reassured me that no matter how long it took for me to get this story out, you would be waiting for it. I really appreciate that. I hate to wait for story updates myself and I hate to make you guys wait for them as the author. But I really appreciate your understanding of my schedule and my not-always-stable state of being that effects my ability to write. So thank you, thank you, thank you. _

_**-Quality Warning:** Okay, this is just getting redundant at this point, let's not even talk about it. It's not where I want it to be, but we'll get back there eventually. Soon? Dear Chuck, I hope soon._

 ** _-Chapter Warnings:_** _Jess is wonderful but ever the bittersweet reminder of another time, Sam is on the verge of a constant panic attack, Cas has good news (once he's done messing up more interviews) and Dean's watching a Jaws marathon while his angel talks with...herself? Himself? Themselves? Ugh. Whatever._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 24

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Jess picked up on the second ring, the line connecting practically mid-sentence at a speed that Sam knew meant she was doing at least two other things at the same time. "If you're calling about the Brady coffee date, it hasn't happened yet."

The pause down the line wasn't intentional on Sam's part. Honestly, it took him a moment to register the words, in part because he hadn't been expecting them, or the energetic rapid fire of them.

"I…chickened out," Jess added in the silence between them, trailing off awkwardly.

Mostly, though, he hadn't been prepared for her first words to so closely echo his dream. The silence stretched, his mind too stunned to form words as panicked thoughts started flying. That had _just_ been a dream, hadn't it? The part with Azazel, _maybe_ , had felt too real, but even if the demon had somehow been dreamwalking through Sam's mind, Jess should have only been a constract.

God, that had to have just been a dream.

As he sensed the tension on the call growing in the seconds ticking by, Sam forced an answer out without thinking, relying on a numb brain, and only played further into the dream. "You still should."

"It could be terrible, Sam," Jess answered, a little too quickly and a little self-deprecating, trying to get back to the energetic start of the conversation that had already train-wrecked so spectacularly. Sam knew he was the one who'd thrown it off (still was), but he couldn't think through the miasma of fear clogging his brain. "Brady's a mess. I'm a mess! And you may want to go Disney, fairy-tale, everyone-gets-a-happy-ending on me, but that's not how real life works! Real life is terrifying and miserable and – okay, it's not miserable all the time, but sometimes it is – and that's just not how relationships work!"

Sam heard her take in a deep breath on the other end, and knew what he should say. What he would normally say. He'd laugh. He'd tell her to take a breath. One day at a time and it was just coffee with a friend. But he couldn't form the words, still seeing Jess sitting on their bed in their Palo Alto apartment, with glowing green eyes. At least she wasn't on the ceiling or bleeding.

"Sam?" Her worried voice broke through his mounting panic attack and the young hunter's grip tightened on the phone. "What's wrong?"

The act of physically shaking himself out of it worked well enough that Sam was able to close his eyes and at least let go of the phone before he broke the damn thing in half. He hadn't meant to scare her. He really needed to stop calling her, doing this to her. These conversations did nothing but drag back memories she was trying valiantly to leave behind.

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong. Everything's okay. I'm sorry. I- I gotta go."

He should never have called her in the first place, but he never seemed able to help it. Couldn't help but bring her back into this when he shouldn't. And now… now he couldn't help but expect Azazel to show his face at any moment, just like in the dream. A dream where he and Jess talked about a coffee date and he ached for how much he missed having her in his life. A dream that had ended with Azazel and a jar of blood.

Shit, the last time the demon had shown himself for that purpose, Sam had been alone in the car just like this. Why? Why hadn't they warded the car against demons? Why had he let Dean and Cas leave? Why hadn't he gone with them?

His fingers began to ache around the phone, his joints protesting the ever tightening grip. He should have hung up already.

"Don't do that, Sam. Don't shut me out." Jess's voice was soft down the line. Gentle, and scared, but still so caring and Sam didn't know what he'd done to deserve having her, even as a friend. The pause lingered, and Sam thought about hanging up. He should hang up. He knew he should hang up, but he couldn't. "If this is about Brady-"

"No," the young man answered immediately, shaking his head adamantly and using the physical movement once more to kick himself into action. "No, it's not about- it's not about that. I promise, Jess. It's…something else. I shouldn't have called."

"Yes, you should've. I'm glad that you did." That answer, never given the same way, never sounding rote or obligatory, always came immediately. Sam loved her all the more for it, though he wished it wasn't true. Letting her go once and for all would be so much easier if she pushed him away. "So talk to me."

Sam leaned his head back against the seat, slouching down as he closed his eyes and bit back the sigh. She needed to let him go just as much, damnit.

"I…had a dream." He could hear the tension in her lack of response immediately, and he understood. He could almost see her fingers tighten on the phone, so similar to his own, and the way she would worry her bottom lip.

"About me?"

He picked his head off the seat, eyes widening at the tremble in her voice, despite her braving the words. He should have seen that coming and put a stop to it before it started. "No. I mean, yes, you were in it, but it wasn't about- it wasn't like that. You're safe, Jess. I promise. I'll keep you safe."

He didn't know that and couldn't promise that, but he swore, right then and there (and not for the first, nor the last time) that he would figure out how to keep his promise.

"I know, Sam." It killed her that it was at the expense of his own happiness – their happiness together – and maybe even his life. But Jess also knew it was a lot more complicated than that. "Are you safe?"

Sam hesitated. He didn't want to hesitate, but he knew the second he didn't answer that it was too late to lie. He missed the days when he never considered lying to Jess about anything but his past. "…I don't know. I'm… I'm scared. I'm so damn scared I'm going to do something I can't take back. I'm no good, Jess. What if I- what if I'm-"

She took in a shaky breath but stopped him before he could stumble further down the dark and dangerous rabbit hole. "I know I don't know everything that's going on, but I do know you, Sam, and you _are good_. You're one of the most honest, caring, _loving_ people I know. And no demon or monster or sinister plot will change that. Will change you, Sam."

Tears slipped free and Sam wiped them away with the back of his hand. "I love you," he whispered, and he knew he shouldn't say it. Knew he needed to let her go, stop calling her, stop loving her. Even this new, distant love they were adjusting to, diminished from what it once was by time and space and tragedy. Even that, he needed to let go of, or risk dragging her down with him. But Sam Winchester was a practical man, so he knew it wasn't something he could stop doing in a hundred years, either.

"I know."

Sam smiled at the response, a light chuckle on his lips as she Han Soloed him with a smile in her voice that said she knew it "I gotta go."

"Please be safe."

The young hunter let out a long, shaky breath but nodded in the quiet of the car. "I'll try. Jess, I-"

"You don't need to say it, Sam; I'm not mad. I love you, too."

Sam ended the call with a hesitant thumb, slowly lowering the phone back to his lap as he stared at the black screen. He closed his eyes against the thoughts circling his brain, refusing to think them to the best of his ability, and refusing to let what did slip through overwhelm him. He would figure this out. Dean and he would figure it out, like they always did.

"Hello, Sam."

The words came from the backseat and Sam was spun around, back to the dash, gun drawn tight to his chest and aimed at the new passenger before he registered the wingbeats or the gravely, female voice. He almost pulled the damn trigger, too, expecting yellow eyes and practically putting them there himself in his panic. But it was only Castiel staring back at him, completely unmoving, as blue eyes went from his face down to the gun and back. Realization hit like a tidal wave, the adrenaline left Sam like the receding water before one, and the hunter all but collapsed in the front seat, shaking.

"Shit," he breathed out, immediately disarming the weapon and engaging the safety. His heart was hammering a mile a minute and his hands were definitely trembling. At least this time he knew it was the adrenaline crash. " _Shit_ , Cas. Don't do that to me."

"Are you alright?" The angel was still staring unblinkingly at him as Sam struggled to stow the gun. The last thing they needed right now was a case of friendly fire.

"Yeah. Yeah, you just…surprised me." Scared the shit out of him, was more accurate. Sam's heart finally started to calm from the almost painful thrumming against his ribcage as he worked on calm, even breaths. Realizing the angel was supposed to be with his brother, he straightened, eyes darting to the sheriff's building and back to Cas. "What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"

Castiel's eyes didn't quite stay on his, and Sam wondered if he was reading Angela's face correctly for the sheepishness he saw there. "Dean exiled me to the car."

Sam's eyebrows went up and yep, he was definitely reading that look right as it got worse.

"Apparently, using air quotes during an interview with a sheriff, particularly when telling you are an 'FBI agent'" -and here Castiel did, indeed, raise her hands to repeat her apparent misstep inside- "is not appropriate human behavior." Her gravely tone was haughty with indignation and Sam let out a relieved little laugh. The angel watched him with a small frown. "Is everything alright, Sam? You seem to be preoccupied."

The hunter didn't answer right away, resettling against the seat to stare through the windshield for a moment as he battled with his choices (and maybe, still, the adrenaline crash and twitchy trigger finger). It was possible Castiel could help. It was also possible she'd find Sam's low-burn desire for demon blood and cowardice too weak and inhuman to be worth heavenly assistance. Sam closed his eyes against the poisonous thoughts that filled him. Dean spoke better of the angel, and Dean didn't speak well about very many people at all.

Besides, Sam's own interactions with Castiel so far suggested that his insidious inner voice had nothing backing it but self-doubt and loathing.

"Dean says that you can visit people in their dreams." Sam angled himself to bring Castiel into his vision, shoulder against the Impala's seat. "That you – or at least the you from his time – would do it if you needed to talk but couldn't be there in person."

"Yes. All angels can dream walk in the minds of humans."

"…What about demons?"

Castiel's head tilted to the side, and Sam thought maybe he was starting to read the angel a little better because he recognized the confusion in that steady, unchanging blue gaze.

"Demons do not dream."

"No, I mean, can demons dream walk?" Sam held his breath as Cas seemed to mull over the question. He avoided meeting the angel's gaze completely, worried it would give away exactly what had deterred his sleep last night.

"If one was strong enough," Castiel answered slowly. "The older or more powerful of them could, yes."

Sam released his breath, forcing it to be slow and silent. They didn't know how powerful Azazel was. At least, Sam didn't. He had no frame of reference for demonic strength, and Dean hadn't mentioned it past the yellow-eyed bastard's leading role for the apocalypse. The younger Winchester swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. Only a fraction of him had hoped last night's dream might have been something born of his own vicious imagination and wasn't the demon himself. Now he wish he hadn't asked, because he was suddenly aware of just how powerful a demon he had mucking about in his head.

"Why do you ask?" Castiel met his gaze through the rear view mirror when Sam tried to look away, aiming for the windshield but unable to avoid those piercing blue eyes and the realization there. "Sam, has a demon visited you?"

"Azazel." The name was out before Sam could think twice about it, though he had to clear his throat after the word practically choked him. "H-He was in my head last night."

Hadn't Max Miller said he'd spoken to a yellow-eyed man in his dreams? A man who told him to get stronger, to practice his powers. To kill his parents with them. Suddenly, it was much harder to breath in the small space of the car.

"Did he harm you?"

Sam glanced Castiel's way, breaking their connection through the mirror in favor of a physical one. He couldn't help but be surprised at the definite concern in the angel's voice. Concern for him.

"Could he have?" the hunter parried, unfamiliar with the physics of demonic dream walking. The question might have come out calm, but Sam was feeling anything but. If Azazel could hurt him, that meant he could hurt others. Worse, if pain transferred in a dream, would drinking demon blood?

The angel broke the intense staring contest as she looked out the window towards the Sheriff's office and Sam wondered if she was going to run off to tell Dean. "His reach would be limited, but the human mind is very powerful and incredibly delicate. If he wanted to hurt you, he could have."

It hurt to swallow and Sam had to force his throat through it. "He threatened me. Wanted me to drink more demon blood."

Castiel's frown sharpened, eyes darting back and forth as she thought. "Consuming demon blood in a dream would have no effect on your body."

Sam's deflated with the relief, though he knew they were hardly out of the woods. Hell, they were still deep in the woods, and the woods might as well be on fire at this point.

And they hadn't even started the Apocalypse yet. How on earth was he going to do this?

"I don't think he's planning on keeping it just in my head."

If Castiel noticed the way his words were as dry as his throat and shaking almost as badly as his hands, the angel didn't say anything of it. "This is very worrisome, Sam."

The hunter couldn't help the sardonic laugh that ripped out of him, leaving a strip of sore, burning slick down the back of his throat. He felt sick. The taste in the back of your mouth you got when you realized you'd caught a cold and knew it was going to be a bad one. "You're telling me."

It was obvious from the quirk of Castiel's head that she didn't understand (yes, she had, indeed, just told him…), but she didn't dwell on it either. They had more important things to focus on. "Perhaps we could hide you from him."

Sam sat upright at that, turning fully around in surprise. "You could do that?"

It's not that it hadn't occurred to him, it was that Sam didn't know of anything that could keep his _dreams_ safe. He knew there were spells and such out there that could hide him and Dean physically, though he didn't know any of them yet, but how was he supposed to protect his mind?

"Yes," the angel answered, so matter-of-factly that Sam simultaneously felt ashamed for his pessimism (but seriously, how could he have known?) and kind of wanted to shake her for not leading with that when this conversation started. "Blocking your mind will be significantly trickier than disguising your physical presence, but both are quite possible."

Sam let out his tenth – hell, maybe his hundredth – breath since the angel had popped into the car and scared the crap out of him.

"This is very a serious matter," Castiel tacked on unnecessarily, though given the look in her eye she felt it was very necessary to say. "Your health and safety are paramount, Sam. I will not return to Heaven until we have ensured the demon cannot get to you again."

Leagues of tension left the young man like the air from a balloon and he slouched against the seat, staring at the angel with awe and relief and a gratefulness he couldn't begin to put into words. Not to mention exhaustion. "Thank you, Castiel."

There was a moment of silence between them, the type that seemed to carry a physical weight, before Castiel almost hesitantly asked, "You were afraid I would say no?"

Worried he'd insulted Castiel – he had been worried the angel would be more judgmental or disgusted than sympathetic – Sam hurried to explain, "I was afraid there would be nothing you could do. Nothing _I_ could do. And…" he hesitated himself, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he stalled. "I thought…maybe you'd- I didn't want to admit how much I want it. But I do."

His voice had grown quiet at the end, ashamed and also horrified of his own weakness. A weakness he was now very certain Azazel was not done exploiting. Worse, Sam knew it was not a battle he would win. He would fight – he would go down fighting with everything he had – but it wasn't going to end the way he wanted it too, and it terrified him how surely he knew that.

"Your craving is not a choice, Sam. It is an addiction, and not one you are at fault for suffering." Castiel's voice was so firm and confident, carrying the weight of Heaven behind it even if the angel wasn't acting as a Warrior or speaking for God in this moment. It was so comforting Sam hadn't even realized how badly he'd needed to hear someone who wasn't his brother – who wasn't biased by love and family and obligation – say it. "The fact that you are struggling, that you are fighting against it, is proof enough to me that you don't truly want it."

Sam had to look away, biting back the tears again. He was usually the one to tell Dean that bottling that stuff up wasn't healthy but, darn it, he didn't exactly want to break down in front of an angel, especially one as stoic as Castiel. He settled back against the seat, closing his eyes as he worked his throat against the burning lump there.

"Thanks, Cas."

The angel gave a nod as serious as her gaze, but when he opened his eyes, Sam was pretty sure he saw the corner of her mouth twitch. "You are welcome, Sam."

Then Dean was striding out of the front doors of the building and back towards the Impala with the information they needed for the case. They were back on the hunt and since Cas didn't feel the need to bring up their conversation again in front of Dean, Sam decided not to say anything either. For now, at least.

-o-o-o-

The FBI shtick, while certainly riskier and paired with greater consequences, did tend to get them more information. The sheriff had eventually given up the details that hadn't been in the report. Their primary suspect was in an altercation several months before her death (which had been ruled a suicide). The case had never gone to trial, the charges dropped due to a lack of evidence, but the police report, concerning the alleged sexual assault of one Nicole Alders, had some pretty damn convincing evidence in there. Sam, ever the lawyer in brain and heart if not degree, could see no other conclusion than a cover up. That left the Winchesters with a sour taste in their mouths and a pretty firm hunch the Sheriff was more involved than he'd let on, considering he was the driving force in burying the case.

Unfortunately for them, Nicole Alder had been cremated and all her possessions returned to her grandmother. Sam quickly recalled the urn resting on the fireplace mantle, a delicate gold necklace with a single heart pendant hanging around its neck, from their previous visit. He'd asked the older woman about it, considering it seemed just the thing a ghost would attach to in order to hang around and exact revenge on the men who had attempted to assault her and gotten off scott-free.

Dean still wasn't convinced her suicide wasn't another cover up of foul play, considering the skeevy vibe the entire Sheriff's office had given him.

However, seeing as Marian Alder was not a fan of theirs and was guaranteed to call the cops if they showed their faces at her Victorian style home again, they were going to have to wait until the old broad went to her weekly Bridge game the next afternoon (it had been hand written in her calendar tacked to the fridge when Dean went to use the restroom and snooped instead). Maybe if they were lucky, Nicole wouldn't strike again so soon. Not to mention, she was out of targets, the three assailants described in the police report matching the victims closely enough to be conclusive, in Dean's opinion. And if her death hadn't been a suicide and others were involved, the Winchester had no idea who, so they had no potential victims to protect. They're best bet was robbing the old lady's house and burning whatever the hell Nicole was still attached to. Hopefully it would be as simple as that necklace she'd worn every day of her life since her fourteenth birthday.

With any luck (not that the Winchesters were ever used to having any), they'd lay her to rest once and for all and be back at Bobby's in time for dinner.

Of course, all of that meant one more night hanging around the dull little town that didn't even have a decent bar scene. Not that Dean was jonesing for a drink. Maybe another night, when Sam wasn't as jumpy as a tweaker on six straight energy drinks and Cas wasn't…well, _female_. Dean might finally be getting his body on the same page as his head, but he didn't think adding alcohol to that just-barely-getting-there situation was a stellar idea.

So, instead, he plopped down on the cheap mattress, his body bouncing on the thin yet somehow still rock-hard springs. Remote in hand, he decided to find himself some quality television to spend the next hour not thinking about.

Of course, that would be a lot easier if Cas wasn't standing in front of the TV, milling about like she didn't know what to do with herself.

"You make a better door than window, Cas," Dean said with a hint of amusement. Cas frowned at him as Sam grabbed something out of his bag and headed past her for the bathroom. Dean gestured to the bed with the remote. "Come on, sit. We'll get a head start on that pop culture education of yours."

Cas awkwardly perched on the edge of the mattress, clearly new at this, body mostly turned towards the TV but eyes locked on Dean. The hunter just shook his head and flipped the television on. He started channel surfing, Cas's attention finally pulled away from him by the rapidly changing moving pictures, until Dean found something mindlessly satisfying. He settled on Jaws, perking up a bit at the old classic that was apparently part of a marathon. Maybe not as mind-numbing as he'd been going for, but you just didn't pass up the classics.

"This is a good one," he said aloud, Cas turning her head back to lock that blue gaze on his as he launched into a basic plot synopsis for the angel. He'd just finished identifying the main characters as the last one – Quint – showed up on screen, when Sam came out of the bathroom in his workout gear.

Dean, halfway to telling Cas it was gonna be hard for her to watch the movie if she was busy watching Dean and not the television, stopped mid-sentence when he spotted what his brother was wearing. The older Winchester raised his eyebrows. "Going somewhere, Forrest?"

Sam rolled his eyes but answered exactly how his brother was expecting anyway. "For a run."

Which only got him Dean's raised eyebrows looking pointedly at the clock. "At eleven at night?"

The brunette ignored his brother and headed for the door, snagging his iPod and headphones on the way. Aggravated and just about done with being kept out of whatever loop his brother was playing in – a loop apparently bad enough to call for midnight runs instead of, oh, say, _sleeping_ – Dean sat up on the bed.

"Okay, that's it. What's going on with you?"

"Nothing, Dean." Sam strapped his iPod to his arm with one of those stupid looking armbands and plugged his earbuds in. "I've just got energy to burn."

"Bullshit." Dean swung his legs over the edge of the bed, done pulling punches. "You mean you don't want to go to sleep."

At Sam's fierce glare his direction, Dean knew he'd hit the nail on the head. Not that he'd had any doubts. He knew this kid better than any other person on the planet.

"Damn it, Sam, will you just tell me what this is about?" He stood from the bed, tossing the remote onto the comforter. In his periphery, he saw Cas stand as well. "You too freaked out to sleep, but not too freaked out to go put yourself out, alone, in the middle of nowhere without even a weapon on hand?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, do we have a weapon that can stop a demon?" Sam shot back, bitchiness turned all the way up at his brother trying to control his life. First Azazel, now Dean. Sam refused to be kept hidden from the world just because it was trying to kill him. And yeah, maybe that was stupid, but damnit, he needed _out._ He couldn't stop living because of fear. He wouldn't, even if he couldn't stop himself from jumping at every damn corner. That was why he needed to run. To pound pavement and feel the air burn in his lungs because he wasn't gonna get that anytime soon hunting down a demon they couldn't find but sure as hell could find them.

Dean ground his teeth in response, because no, they didn't have anything Sam could arm himself against Azazel. At least not yet.

"I will watch over you while you go on your…run."

Both brothers turned at Castiel's grave voice, her look as serious as ever as she glanced between the two and they just stared right back. Her intense gaze settled on Sam. "If it is okay with you, I will monitor you while you run. I can be at your side in an instant should something happen."

She directed that last bit at Dean, and Sam turned his own challenging gaze to his brother, as if to say 'there you go.' Dean pulled quite the bitchface of his own, but answered by grabbing the remote off the bed and plopping back on top of the mattress.

"Fine," he conceded, clearly not happy about it. "Cas can hang with me, but I'm telling you her education is gonna be severely hampered if she's busy watching you do your best impression of Usain Bolt."

It was Dean's way of agreeing while still being a total jerk about the whole thing, but Sam would take it.

"I don't even know who that is, Dean," he bit back, though his tone was one that said 'suck it'. He grabbed a jacket and threw it on as he opened the door. "Cas, don't listen to anything he has to say. The only stuff you'll learn from Dean's choice of shows is how to pick up chicks. Poorly, too."

The older Winchester let out a loud harrumph from the bed, turning scandalized eyes on his little brother. "Nonsense, Sam. She's a _lady_. We're gonna find a good soap opera and then she's gonna learn the glory that all soaps teach us: how to slap a dude."

Sam shook his head, knowing they had a hell of a lot more to talk about than _this_ , but appreciating his brother letting him have it, and his need to get out, all the same. As he closed the door behind him, he heard Cas's voice as she got the final say on the non-argument she probably didn't realize they were having.

"I thought we were learning how to be killed by man-eating sharks."

-o-o-o-

They didn't even make it ten minutes further into the movie before Cas was doing more Dean-watching than she was TV-watching. Specifically, some Dean-Chest-Watching. The hunter finally rolled his eyes and gave the angel a pointed look where she sat on the edge of the mattress, looking entirely out of place in her fed getup and completely rigid posture.

"Definitely hard to watch man-eating sharks if you're busy watching me, Cas," were the first words out of his mouth, and Dean managed to clamp down on his tongue before he could let out the second set (a quip about the only exception being that he himself was a legendary _wo_ man-eater…Well, you get it). Apparently, his brain was not quite on the right page yet either and that was definitely not something one said in the company of angels. Or most females. Or most female angels.

While Cas probably wouldn't get the joke (either side of it, and it _was_ a pretty good one, if Dean did say so himself) the devil lady currently playing host the angel would. And Dean really didn't want to be any more of a creep or a dick to Angela than he already had been by nature of…well, nature.

"Apologies," Castiel eventually said, raising her eyes up to Dean's face.

The hunter narrowed his eyes in return. Seriously, what was up with everyone around him acting all weird today? Cas shifted on the bed, hands restless in her lap, before she dropped her gaze and Dean couldn't help but raise his eyebrows at that. That was what Cas did when he was embarrassed or ashamed. What the hell was shameful about staring at Dean's chest? Creepy? Absolutely. Annoying? Sure. But _shameful_?

"I was hoping to seek conference," the angel confessed, much to Dean's confusion because…what?

"Conference?"

Castiel let out a breath of air that very well could have been a sigh, only Dean was pretty sure Cas hadn't figured those out naturally yet. "The brother that I conferred with in Heaven. He told me things that were very… disturbing."

Which was back-in-the-day Cas speak for 'freaked him the hell out.' Dean frowned, realizing that Cas was getting real here and this was probably about what had been bothering her all day. So he muted the TV and sat up, pushing back against the headboard. It still didn't sit well with Dean that Cas was intent to follow through with the insane plan to recruit angels to their side. Dean knew how wrong that could go and he'd been waiting for that shoe to drop for weeks now.

"What things?"

Cas met his gaze, and he could see anguish in that otherwise stoic ocean. "He has seen proof of Naomi's tamperings."

The hunter couldn't help the way his hands curled into fists against the thin comforter, but he kept his breathing even with years of mastering rogue emotions. Given the little oddities throughout the day in Cas's behavior and the look in her usually neutral face, Dean could well figure that proof had come in a Castiel-shaped box wrapped with a big, ugly bow.

God, he wanted that bitch as dead as she'd been in his time.

"I'm sorry, Cas." He could see the devastation in the slight slump of his friend's shoulders, and certainly in her eyes. She hadn't wanted to believe him, which was fair. What he'd had to tell royally sucked for the angel. He woulda wished it wasn't true, too, if he had that luxury.

Cas turned her gaze away, focusing back on the silent images flickering one after the other on the television screen. Dean knew she didn't give a crap about what she was watching, but he knew how a distraction made things easier in moments like these. "It was hard to hear. I… I felt an urgent need to leave Heaven. To…escape…to somewhere safe."

Safer than what was supposed to be her home.

Dean nodded. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the angel having something like a panic attack, though the Castiel of this time probably wouldn't be familiar with them. Still, it turned out with things like that, angels were a lot more like humans than they thought (or ever seemed willing to admit). So he did what he would do for any human; he offered an encouraging, sympathetic smile. "I get it. I really do, man. I'm glad you came looking for us."

Cas was staring again, but at least this time it was directed at Dean's face. The hunter fidgeted as the silence turned from companionable and acceptable to just plain awkward. "So…uh…did you wanna…talk?"

The head tilt suggested no, but Dean cleared his throat and tried again. "You said you were looking for, uh, conference?"

Cas straightened (the angelic version of "Oh") and seemed to realized what Dean meant. Her face might have barely moved, but Dean narrowed his eyes at the sudden impression of sheepishness he got. He knew Cas too well.

"Not with you," the angel offered in explanation, and perhaps a slight apology in her gravely tone, though not one that anyone else on the planet had any hope of picking up. Again, Dean knew this guy too damn well. Er…girl.

"Not with me?" Dean balked, half insulted (cuz, _rude_ ) and half confused, because there wasn't exactly anyone else there to talk to. Maybe Cas meant Sam, but then why help him go off for a friggin' midnight run when he should be sleeping like a normal person who tells their brother the truth about shit going down. "Then who the hell else-"

Dean's words were cut off by that blue gaze dropping to his chest again, and oh _. Oh_. Dean blinked in realization, glancing down at his sternum and the sliver angel apparently sitting pretty just behind it. Cas could do that…with…himself? Herself? Uh, themselves? Ugh, whatever.

"You can do that?" Dean sat up straighter, something between a frog caught in his throat and a flutter in his chest playing tug of war with his body. "You can…talk to him?"

"It will not be a conversation as you would think of it," Cas answered back, "but yes, I should be able to commune with my grace in a manner of speaking."

The hunter sat, blinking stupidly at the angel. About a dozen and a half thoughts went through his head (the first five discarded under the category 'grow up, Dean' (oddly said in Sam's tone of voice), the next five thrown out for 'get your head out of the gutter, Dean' (Jo's voice), the two after that were a stuttering mess Dean couldn't identify (but were accompanied with an 'Aww, that's so sweet. Gay as a leprechaun in a thong in the middle of a pride parade. But really sweet'. Charlie's voice. Definitely Charlie on that one) and the last were pretty much just a series of Cas himself thanking Dean for his understanding and patience about a dozen times throughout their friendship, and only like one of which the human had friggin' earned. So, yeah, ending on that note meant he sucked up his manliness, tucked away his sarcasm, told Charlie to maybe just cool it with the imagery (because, uh, what the hell and also _eww_ ) and moved the hell over on the bed to make room for his friend in need). The shuffle across the comforter was a little awkward, and Dean cleared his throat when Castiel didn't move despite it. Eventually, with an epic eye roll, he had to pat the warm dip in the mattress he had previously filled for his friend to get the hint. "Okay, uh, come on over and… commune, or whatever."

Once the invitation was painstakingly clear, Castiel didn't hesitate. She stood from the end of the bed, crossed the distance around the mattress, and resettled beside Dean. Like the angel she was, Cas didn't know well enough to settled on the bed beside him, instead sitting stiffly and awkwardly half-turned towards the hunter with her legs off the side and feet planted firmly on the ground.

Dean didn't bother telling her otherwise, because her hand was spread across his chest in about the same breath she'd sat down, and the hunter was busy breathing through the sudden warmth fluttering through his pecs. He hadn't forgotten the flip-flopping feel of that grace in his sternum reuniting with its original source, but he'd sort of let himself forget just how damn good it felt. Like cotton candy at a county fair or the spin-o-cycle you'd ride right afterward.

Or, you know, really good sex.

Another clearing of his throat later and Dean forced that – and any follow up thought of the same line – so far from his mind they probably landed somewhere in Timbuktu. He glanced at the angel, hoping Cas hadn't heard any of that (though they were working on that whole privacy-of-mind thing). But Cas had closed her eyes and Dean was suddenly distracted – taken, though he'd never use a term so chick-flicky – by the look of peace that stole over her features. Her breathing deepened, her body stilled but not in that stiff, unnatural way. Dean was suddenly aware of how oddly intimate – and therefore very, _very_ awkward – the moment had just become.

"I am making you uncomfortable."

Dean blinked at the suddenly blue eyes open and locked on his, though that hand was still flush to his t-shirt clad chest and he got the impression Cas really didn't want to remove it.

"Uh…" He gave an awkward cough but told all that interior panic to shut up. This was _Cas_ , and all he – she – wanted was some comfort. Uh, conference. Dean decided it was probably for the best if he spent the next however-long-Cas-was-communing looking anywhere else, though. "No, man, it's- uh…it's cool. Do what you gotta do."

The hunter straight up yelped when Cas went and, like friggin' lightning, slid her hand up under his shirt to resettle in the exact same place, now flush to flesh.

"What the hell!" he wiggled underneath her cold fingers and the angel froze, bright blue eyes locked, all wide and innocent on his (and that was _not_ friggin fair. No way Devil Lady wasn't in there telling his innocent angel to friggin' feel him up).

"This is worse?" she intoned, and damnit, she really did sound confused. Cas wasn't that good of an actor, which made all of this so much worse.

"You thought it would be _better_?" Dean countered, incredulous, as he switched between staring pointedly at the arm buried under his t-shirt and the angel.

"Skin contact allows for a much clearer connection," Cas explained, like the answer was obvious and Dean was the one causing problems here.

Dean couldn't help the deadpan glare if he tried, and he absolutely did not try. He collapsed back against the pillows, muttering, "Of course it does."

The angel seemed hesitant for a minute, and Dean could tell she was considering pulling away. So he grumbled that it was fine, just do whatever it was she needed to do in order to 'seek conference' and he'd go back to watching Jaws II. Although Cas could tell her human charge was not entirely pleased with this despite his words, she really could benefit from communing with the grace inside his chest. So, cautiously, she settled back onto the bed beside the hunter and closed her eyes, welcoming the entanglement of her power with the dormant sliver deep inside her charge's chest.

"You tell Angela she better shut her pie hole about this," Dean grumbled again after a moment of tense silent.

"Angel is currently sleeping."

Green eyes slid her way and Castiel could tell he was trying to decide whether or not to believe her. Finally, Dean seemed to relax a fraction more, and Cas filed the interaction away for later inspection. Apparently, what her human host thought of Dean mattered to him, which Castiel did not understand. It was unlikely that he and Angela Garrett would ever speak face-to-face, and there was no one but Castiel with whom she could share her thoughts or judgements, as the angel suspected was Dean's true fear.

Perhaps _that_ was what the human found worrying, then.

"You have nothing to be concerned about," Castiel concluded, and Dean raised an eyebrow her way, not following the conversation. "She likes you. As do I."

Bright red colored Dean's cheeks almost immediately, and he looked away like something Castiel had said was not something he had wanted to hear. Humans were confusing as ever.

"Uh. Yeah, thanks." Dean cleared his throat again and was it dusty in here or something? Maybe he should try a glass of water. "That's- yeah. Uh. You too- or, uh, me too. I guess. You know."

Castiel did not know, given that none of that had been a full sentence or particularly informative. But she accepted it all the same, the awkward intent obvious enough. And as Dean turned his attention back to the television set with laser-like focus, Castiel closed her eyes and once more sought out her matching existence in the man's chest.

-o-o-o-

Dean couldn't help himself. Between the fact that Jaws II was just not that good of a movie (definitely not a classic like the first one and lacking the ridiculousness of the third) and the warmth blossoming in his chest in a current loop of happy little pulse-explosions, he couldn't ignore the angel sitting next to him like he had planned to. He kept sneaking glances at her when he was pretty sure she wasn't paying attention. Which was the entire time, actually, and the more confident he got about that, the longer he would stare.

Angela was a beautiful woman, no doubt about it, but what Dean realized the longer he watched her was the more of Cas that he could see in her features. It could have been her distant relation to Jimmy that saw such similarities, but something niggled in the back of his mind (and the front of his chest) telling him that wasn't what he was seeing. Soon enough it became something of a game, a challenge, really, to spot the angel he knew in the human's features.

It was more entertaining than the movie, was what he told himself, anyway.

There was a lightness to her skin, dark and red-toned as it was, that struck familiarity in the hunter. Nothing supernatural, though Dean had the distinct impression that it was the grace filling her human vessel that gave off that impression. A calm confidence that spoke of no doubts and no insecurities, something that simply seemed inhuman in a way (and which Dean knew not to be true, but which angels seemed so damn good at suppressing). There was a squareness to her jaw Dean was pretty sure didn't belong to Angela. It spoke of discipline and military and obedience, which he didn't figure was part of the Devil Lady's normal demeanor.

Not that he knew how a square jaw could possibly be a demeanor. The damn thing should have been genetics, but nope. Dean was pretty sure without Cas around, the angles of those cheekbones and that jaw would be way softer.

Friggin' angels, man.

He tried to think of differences he'd seen in Sam, both with Gadreel and Lucifer. He didn't like to think about the latter, but it was probably the most obvious change in his brother to go off of. Gadreel had been stiff, and Dean had written off the changes in his brother mostly as the angel unfamiliar with humanity and with what was possibly a bigger stick up his ass than even Cas had ever had. Looking back on it now, though, Dean wondered if the way Gadreel had ground his brother's jaw hadn't been a symptom of the angel himself, as he was fairly certain Cas was doing for Angela now. Lucifer possessing Cas had actually been similar, with the angel seeming far harder around the edges than normal.

It was an interesting realization that was utterly and completely ended when the hotel room door handle jiggled a millisecond before Sam swung the damn thing open with no further warning.

Dean was up and off and across the bed all in one go. He ended up going from laying to rolling to standing with far too much momentum in the small space between the second bed and the wall that separated the main room from the bathroom. He managed not to tumble over completely as one foot took half the thin comforter with him and he had to catch himself flat-palmed on the wall with a loud smack. All of which he covered completely and totally smoothly with a single hand on his hip and an award winning smile for the rest of the room that spoke of absolutely nothing wrong with this situation in the slightest.

Cas, still half-perched on the bed with her hand outstretched over a now empty space, just blinked up at him, a little stunned and clearly confused. Sam, on the other hand, stood in the doorway with a look on his face that said 'What the hell?' to the max.

"Uh…." The younger Winchester's eyes went from his panting, disheveled brother oddly groping the motel wall and standing in a space about six inches wide with half the bed coverings dragged off, to the angel with her outstretched arm. A look of, perhaps not understanding but certainly amusement, crossed his face as hazel eyes resettled on his big brother. "Why are you breathing like you just ran a marathon?"

Dean balked, pulling his head back and letting go of the wall to stand normally. "You're one to talk."

Sam, who was actually breathing pretty acceptably for having just gone on an hour run, said as much with a bitchface (a little bit of #8, _"Did you seriously just say that?"_ but mostly #12).

"Dude, I _was_ running." The younger hunter glanced between the two again and some more of that little-brother-evil-glee lit his face. "What were you two doing?"

"Shut your mouth right now," Dean growled as he stalked around the bed, practically tripping over the comforter _again_ as he navigated the small space. "We were watching TV."

"Uh-huh." Sam shut the door behind him, pulling his headphones off from around his neck and wrapping them around his iPod.

"Tell him, Cas," Dean demanded, gesturing towards the still confused angel who had at least lowered her arm by that point.

Castiel switched between Dean and Sam, who started peeling off his sneakers but was regarding the angel with some mix of enjoyment and encouragement.

"Dean was watching television," she began and the hunter in question gestured towards her with both arms like she had proved his point. Unfortunately for him, she was not done telling. "I was conferencing with the grace in his chest."

"Traitor!" Dean hissed, much to the worriment of Castiel, who could not quite tell what she had betrayed. But the hunter didn't seem all that mad, throwing himself down onto the end bed as Sam purposefully sent a look his way that he flat out ignored. He grabbed the remote and jacked the volume to the TV way up. Lucky for him, Sam was way more interested in conversing about the technicalities of grace communing than the liquid-gold teasing material this mess absolutely was (especially as Cas held back nothing when it came to how much better skin-on-skin contact was for the process).

("Oh? It is, is it? How _much_ skin contact, exactly?" That stupidly high pitch voice had been pointed right in his direction and Dean answered it with a single raised finger.)

He was sure he'd be hearing plenty about this in the future. Winchester's weren't exactly known for letting golden opportunities slide. In which case, Dean would promptly remind the kid of that time he tried to kiss Stacie Harrison at his eighth grade dance and ended up with a face full of punch. That'd teach him.

In the meantime, if Cas needed anymore _conferencing_ , she could do it with her friggin' eyeballs and about thirty-nine and a half feet between them.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns** : While I've been struggling with this story, I've allowed the muse to wander a bit and get out some of the other stuff that's been distracting her. So keep an eye out over the next couple weeks for some new stories. They'll all be relatively short or oneshots, but I'm trying to line some of them up to sprinkle in when this story encounters a lengthy delay._

 _ **Up Next:** We wrap this piddly little case up (and Cas finally shows that yes, having an angel on a hunt is actually handy) and finally, finally, finally land ourselves in actual-season-two-land. Thank the lord!_


	58. Season 2: Chapter 25

_**-Summary:**_ _It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU_

 _ **-A/Ns** : Thank you all again for your second round of patience. I'm still climbing my way out of this sucky low, but I'm getting there and have high hopes for the future. I know it sucks, but I honestly recommend maybe re-reading the last three or four chapters to kind of catch up with what's been going on. These chapters were never meant to be read with a month's span between them (and I am so very sorry it's turned out that way)_

 _ **-Chapter Warnings:** We are wrapping up our intermediate season 2.0 (soon to be on with Season 2.1!) with a little bit of a bang and hopefully some giggles. Cas is showing off, Sam's setting things on fire, Dean's being **a man** (snort). And that's just the first half (the second half involved human toes) ;D _

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 25

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

While Mrs. Alders was out at her Tuesday Bridge meetup, the Winchesters and their angel broke into her house, grabbed the necklace (and the urn, just to be thorough), and hightailed it out of there before any nosey neighbors got suspicious or had itchy-dialing fingers. They drove the urn to the nearest cemetery, for the purpose of a somewhat isolated location without a lot of visitors where they could burn a friggin' metal thing full of already burned granddaughter, and what they hoped was the only thing keeping her tied to this plane.

Dean would have preferred doing it at the park not three blocks from the old lady's house. He did _not_ like a giant mound of ashes in an unsealed container just hanging out in his baby, not to mention the thing the homicidal bitch was probably tied to ('bitch' was a bit harsh; the girl's death certainly didn't sound pleasant. But she'd damn well mutilated the last guy in a way no man ever wants to be mutilated. So, yeah, Dean wasn't feeling too cordial about hosting an open invitation for the man-mutilator to come party with more men who had men-things to be mutilated, and, oh yeah, they were currently trying to kill her themselves. Yeah. Nothing to possibly go wrong with that equation.)

Luckily for them, Sam's point of maybe not fighting a ghost in public place just because it was nearby (not to mention city by-laws about open flames) was backed up by the fact that no ghost tried to attack them in the Impala. Whether that was because they had an angel with them (Dean's theory), a woman with them (Sam's theory) or the fact that the car was fairly heavily warded (Castiel's silent observation which she did not offer aloud, mostly due to being somewhat confused as to why neither man listed it as a possibility. Surely Dean would know the warding on his own vehic- _Baby_ ) was not something the ghost clarified for them once she did show up to mutilate their man bits.

(She didn't actually try to mutilate any bits, man or woman, she just straight up tried to kill them, but Dean was a touch touchy about his man bits and also maybe paranoid about cases that could potentially concern them.)

Back in the car, Castiel was more focused on understanding human intricacies than the murderous rage of a spirit trapped on the earthly plane after an unpleasant death.

' _I still do not understand how a car can be female_ ,' Castiel returned internally as Angela reminded him Dean's vehicle was named Baby. He looked around the backseat of the car, down leather and stitching, across carpeting and metal, but could not find any distinguishing feminine features.

' _Don't worry about it. It's a guy thing.'_

Whatever sort of thing it was – be it a guy thing, a warding thing, a woman thing, or an angel thing – it ended the second they stepped out of the car in the quiet, isolated corner of the town's largest cemetery. Nicole Alder was on them like a rabbit on a salad before any of them could draw a weapon.

Lucky for them, and there was no debate about it this time; they had an angel on their side. Dean had been right. Cas was really handy in a fight. The angel tackled Sam out of the way of the oncoming firestorm of fury and bitterness. They hit the ground hard, but Sam was a hunter: back up on his feet with a roll and the pull of his firearm. He got two shots in before Castiel took over.

"Burn the necklace!" she commanded over her shoulder, hand reached out to curl around the ghost's forehead. Nicole Alder cried out in rage and pain, striking out against the angel. Sam saw the hits land, but they didn't seem to be doing much damage.

It was impressive, actually, and Sam sort of got the mix of awe and reverence that sometimes crossed his brother's face whenever he'd talked about the celestial being. Of course, Sam had just thought it was a case of fan-worship. Dean had always been a closet fanboy (sometimes not so closeted). A badass taker-down-of-supernatural-things that was also on their side, let Dean teach him naughty words, watched all his favorite TV shows with him, _and_ liked cheeseburgers almost as much as Dean himself? Yeah, Sam had chalked Dean's admiration of Castiel up to total fanboying.

Of course, the three days they'd spent with the angel so far since Castiel came into their lives were starting to make Sam think he might have been a little more off about the relationship between brother and angel than he'd originally imagined. The female vessel wasn't helping things, but Sam knew his brother well enough to have a hunch that Angela Garrett only had so much to do with it.

Still, back to the point at hand, the younger Winchester now understood the actual reverence a little better now, seeing the angel in action.

Dean was already digging into the trunk for mini-bonfire necessities while Sam continued to gawk as Cas fought off the ghost. The trunk slammed shut and Dean darted past him with a gas can and rag, finally shaking Sam out of it. He raced after him, sliding to his knees once they were a safe enough distance away from the Impala. Sam dug a lighter out of his pocket as Dean curled the rag into a dry patch of grass. As the older Winchester soaked the rag through with gas, Sam reached over and snatched a dried, dead bouquet from a grave and threw it on top, following it with the necklace that dangled from his finger.

Unfortunately for them, Nicole had been pretty smart in life, about to graduate as a physics major with plans to pursue a PhD in the subject. So, Dean figured, Sam had some hope of carrying over all that genius into his afterlife after all. Because Nicole picked up pretty damn quick that the angel would put herself directly in the ghost's way anytime she tried to stop the hunters who were trying to permanently stop her. It took all of two failed attempts before the third was a fake out. Castiel placed herself predictably between the ghost and the Winchesters, only for Nicole to vanish rather than throw her power blast at the boys.

It left the angel's back wide open to attack as Nicole re-appeared behind her. Cold, angry hands fisted in Castiel's coat and flung the angel around and back with a power only years of supernatural anger was capable of creating.

Cas's grunt was enough to alert the two hunters, seconds before she went flying past them. Dean, stupidly, dropped the gas can and launched himself into her flightpath with her name on his lips. They both hit the ground and rolled right into a tombstone with an impressive thud. Sam didn't have time to worry, lighting the rag into a quickly consumed inferno. He shot back to his feet, firearm raised against the approaching phantom, who was seething with rage. She disappeared with the first shot.

The hunter stiffened as he felt her presence reappear behind him. But as he spun to shoot once more, the ghost of Nicole Alder faltered, hands raised for another game of toss-the-hunter. Her body flickered in and out, embers starting to light along her tattered clothing, and her rage consumed face faltered into something far younger.

Sam backed up as she burst into flames and disappeared entirely.

"Shit," Dean groused, sitting up from the base of the grave. His back hurt like hell; he'd have one heck of a bruise from hitting the side of the damn stone straight on. Cas was in his arms, the hunter having padded more of the angel's fall. Once Dean made eye contact with his brother, seeing for himself that Sam was okay, he turned his attention to his friend, who was quite literally in his lap. "You okay?"

Castiel climbed off of her charge unaffected, extending a hand to help him up. "I am unharmed. You should not have done that."

Dean shrugged a shoulder awkwardly, wincing as he climbed to his feet and his back twinged. "I saw an opening, and that tombstone could have hurt you as much as it hurt me."

"That is entirely untrue. I am an Angel of the Lord. No stone would damage me. Your decision to come to my aid was foolish." Castiel reached up with her standard two-finger touch and Dean let out a relieved breath as that familiar healing warmth flooded his back.

"Yeah, well, maybe I'm used to an angel that's a little less invincible, alright?"

Sam's eyebrows went up as Dean's tone got defensive. Paired with the obvious one-over Dean was giving Angel's body (clearly not taking the angel's word that she was fine), Sam easily enough put two and two together and came up with exasperation. Really. Dean was the one had told him that Cas was practically invincible. Bragged about it, pretty much.

Of course, that's when he had been _male_.

Dean caught the knowing look Sam was throwing his way (which, _screw that_ ) and shrugged, irritated that he'd tried to help and was getting flack for it. He grumbled under his breath, turning back to the angel only to find Cas was regarding him with narrowed, squinty eyes that were too damn familiar on a foreign face.

"You do not think I can protect myself in this vessel?"

The hunter leveled an immediate finger in her direction. "I didn't say that."

"You did not have to."

He bristled. "Quit reading my head, Cas!"

The angel just kept squinty-eyeing him and, all haughtily, replied, "I am not."

Dean snapped his mouth shut, realizing he'd all but admitted to thinking the angel was weaker cuz she was girl. Damnit, that's not what he meant and everyone here should friggin' know it. Friggin' know him!

"I don't think you're- it's not because you're- damnit, women aren't weak, alright? I mean, some of them need protection, but that doesn't mean-" The older Winchester let out a vocal, dangerous growl and wished the moment would just end. Why was this so hard? Sam might as well hand him a shovel for all that digging he was doing. He blew out a breath and squared his shoulders. "It's not about that, Cas. I _save_ people, okay? _We_ save people. I will always put myself between them and whatever's coming. You included!"

He was gesturing wildly by the end of it, but fuck it. As his words echoed into the silence of the midday graveyard and he finally dropped his arms, Dean realized they were both still staring at him, but the mood had changed. Sam actually looked impressed, in that smug-little-brother-who's-smarter-than-you, but still. And Cas just tilted her head, a thoughtful moue replacing the earlier irritation.

Then Cas was stepping into his personal space, putting her hand on his arm, right over a mark that wasn't there, and staring at him in some sort of amazement that absolutely did not travel south. On a male Cas, that admiration had looked so damn serious it was awkward. Real easy to clear his throat, pat the guy on the back, and move on. On Angela, it was the kind of look he usually got in a dark bar when he was on a damn good streak and he knew he was getting lucky that night.

 _Shit_.

He added it to the list of things to talk to Cas about never ever doing again.

"The capacity for human compassion continues to amaze me. You are a good man, Dean Winchester." The angel offered the smallest of smiles, something experimental that she didn't quite get right, but it was close. Dean swallowed, face flushing in the embarrassment of this situation and the audience it just had to have (because, of course it did). "While I do not need your protection, I am honored by the concern for my wellbeing. You care."

"Uh…" Dean cleared his throat, looking down at the hand still gripping his bicep if only to ignore the angel staring at him like he'd just saved the friggin world. God. _Awkward_. "Sure. If you, uh, wanna make it all girly."

Beside him, Sam snorted and Dean shot him a glare. They stood there until it was clear Cas wasn't going to move, and Dean finally took her hand, patted it inelegantly, released it, and told her, "Good talk."

Sam was still choking back a laugh by the time they made it to the Impala and he had three new bruises from Dean's sharp elbow straight to his ribs.

-o-o-o-

They were just opening the doors of the Impala when Cas turned to them like she was about to leave and Dean immediately tensed up.

"I have an… errand to run?" she surprised them by saying – well, sort of asking, like she wasn't sure that was the right phrase – but her eyes were locked on Sam. Understanding (and relief? What was up with that) flickered across his features, causing Dean to frown in his brother's direction. When he gave her an encouraging nod, probably over the turn of phrase, she continued, "I will return before you go to sleep tonight."

At the same time, Dean asked, "What errand?" but she was already gone. Annoyed (and confused, not that he'd admit it), the older Winchester turned to Sam, suspicion painting over the annoyance. His brother knew something, darnit. "What errand!"

"I don't know." Sam climbed into the car. Dean followed. It wasn't a lie. Sure, Sam had a hunch what the errand was about, but it's not like he knew what Cas had gone off to do. Dean was glaring at him now, all squinty-eyed himself. Sam rolled his eyes. "Did you want to go get lunch or not?"

"You're buying," his brother answered, all pouty and grumpy. He stuck the key into Baby's ignition and started her up. "And there better be pie."

-o-o-o-

They grabbed lunch in town which, along with the benefit of damn decent pie (the town was worth saving after all, it turned out), gave them the opportunity to stick around, make sure the ghost was really gone and nothing else was left to torment these people. The brothers mulled about for a way longer lunch than they usually took, but nothing turned up and it looked like the case was over and they could leave town.

Only they couldn't, because Cas was out running _errands_ , didn't have a cell phone (Dean would be fixing that immediately) and had all but told them she'd be at the motel that night, which was the only place she knew to meet them.

True to her word, Cas showed back up right about the time they would have turned in for the night. 'Would have' being the key words, as Dean was too keyed up waiting for her return to possibly sleep (she wouldn't have gone back to Heaven, would she? What errand could possibly end up there?) and Sam was restless and exhausted to the point of either passing out where he stood or leaving for another night's run. Being afraid to sleep would do that to a guy.

The clatter of glass jars clinking together drowned out the sound of wingbeats, and Dean sat up in surprise at the sudden noise, Sam spinning towards the small living area of the motel. Cas was standing beside the kitchenette table, almost a dozen jars of varying sizes and colors now on the cheap faux-wood surface. Dean hopped off the bed as Sam went over to investigate.

"What the hell's all this?" the older Winchester asked, his brother already examining some of the jars and the mystery contents. Looked like spell components. Small, dried flowers and grasses. A couple powders. Dean picked up a container of liquid and quickly put it back down. "Please tell me those aren't toes."

"They are not toes," Cas confirmed, and Dean let out a relieved breath. They sure looked like toes. "They are mushrooms. A rare species that grows only in the mountains of Japan."

Dean frowned over at her. "Is that where you were all day?"

Collecting Japanese fungus toes. Sure, why not. Sounded like something Cas would do.

She looked at the ingredients pointedly. "I was many places."

"What's it all for, Castiel?" Sam asked, far more reasonably, as he set down the jar of mushrooms soaked in a yellow-brown liquid. He couldn't help the scrunched up face, though. They really did look like human toes.

The angel dug two small, cloth pouches out of her coat pocket (and Dean internally congratulated himself on the purchase of the totally practical piece of tan clothing. Having pockets was _practical_ ) and handed one to each of the brothers. Dean could spot a hex bag from a mile away, and so he took the thing a hell of a lot more cautiously than this brother.

"Hex bags," Cas confirmed Dean's suspicions, and Sam's eyebrows shot up. It wasn't his first time running into them (witches, man. They were the worst), but he probably hadn't expected an angel to be handing him one. "They will disguise your presence from Azazel."

The look that crossed Sam's face was so damn relieved that Dean _almost_ didn't round on him, an expectantly raised brow and bland expression (hiding a pissy expression) on his face. "Azazel?"

Sam seemed uncomfortable, but kept his gaze with a fierce determination of his own. "I told you he showed up in my dream."

"No," Dean countered immediately, the bland definitely giving way to pissed-the-hell-off as he waggled a finger at his brother. "You told me you had a bad dream, and you mentioned the name. You didn't tell me Azazel was visiting you in your damn head!"

Which, yeah, Dean had put together himself, thank you very much, but it wasn't the same thing and Sam knew it.

Dean turned away from his brother's mixed look of puppy-dog guilt and ' _I'm not a child'_ anger. He lifted the hex bag, which given the not-human-toes sitting on the table, he really didn't want to know the ingredients of. "This is awesome and all, Cas – real creative – but why don't you just zap us on the ribs with some Enochian like last time?"

Castiel tilted her head tellingly in his direction, and Dean knew that look. It was the annoyed look that said, so plainly he could _hear_ it, _'Because I wasn't there last time, Dean_.' Or maybe that was future-Cas, speaking from his chest, which twitched behind his sternum. Dean wondered who that twinge was for; agreeing with Dean or defending his other self.

He could probably guess, and it wasn't the one he'd have liked it to be.

"That is a creative solution," Castiel answered, and despite Dean's internal going-ons, the angel didn't seem annoyed. If anything, she sounded thoughtful. Dean wondered if this Cas was impressed with her own – well, her future – ingenuity. "However, we should avoid anything that uses Enochian, else I would teach you several warding symbols that would be far more efficient than hex bags."

She gestured to the table now crammed with ingredients and Dean realized they were going to have to store all that stuff in the trunk and learn how to make the damn bags. Awesome.

"Why not?" Sam asked, though he was already tucking the hex bag into his pocket and Dean narrowed his eyes at the trust. Not that Sam shouldn't trust Cas but…they were _hex bags_ , man. Witchcraft was never good. Carved ribs was a much better option, future X-ray needs and hospitals aside.

"Those will ward you from all creatures, angels included." She nodded toward the one Dean still held, and he looked down at it, begrudgingly impressed (very begrudgingly) at the strength of the thing. Hex bags didn't usually have a large range unless they were powerful or black magic. He knew Cas wouldn't give them something dark, though, so that meant the magic for these bags was old. "Heaven is likely watching you, even now. If they investigate why you disappeared from their senses and see Enochian warding as the cause-"

"They'll know we've got a rogue angel helping us out," Dean finished, stomach sinking. Maybe it wouldn't be the first conclusion they'd jump to, but it would stir up way too much curiosity either way. He tucked the hex bag in his pocket with resignation. Witchcraft it was.

"Yes," Cas agreed. "Once they realize the source of the interference is a hex bag, they'll have no reason to be suspicious. It would not be uncommon for hunters to use such a solution when trying to hide from demons."

"The fact that it hides us from Heaven is just an accidental benefit," Sam offered with a wry smile, knowing it was anything but coincidental. Cas went for another smile, a little closer to hitting her mark that time. Then she was digging into her coat again, producing a small, thick, gold coin.

"The bags only disguise your presence; they are not protection. Finding a means to permanently guard your mind from intrusion would be… more complicated than we have time for, I'm afraid. But this will stop you from dreaming." Cas handed the coin over to Sam, who ran his thumb over the ancient medal and the crudely carved face on one side. "It is a Persian sleep coin, magicked to block the owner from experiencing any form of dreaming when asleep. You place it under your head; beneath your pillow would work, I imagine."

Sam flipped the coin over. It didn't look like anything special.

"Wait, it blocks all dreams?" Dean parroted, staring at the thing with a mixed expression. "Nightmares too?"

"All dreams," Cas confirmed. "It was originally created for a Persian King who suffered sleep terrors. He summoned all types of sorcerers and mages to his kingdom to find him a cure."

"…Is there more than one?" Dean asked, and there was a hint of hopefulness in his voice that had Sam sending him a look. They were lucky enough Cas had gone halfway across the world to fetch them this one. Dean glared defensively back at his brother. "What? I want one."

Castiel regarded her human charge with slightly narrowed eyes, trying to figure out if he was joking or serious, and if serious, just how serious. "Unfortunately, they are difficult to come by. I was lucky to find this one."

"Yeah, yeah. Figures," Dean grumbled.

The angel turned back to Sam, considering the discussion closed on Dean getting a shiny no-nightmare coin of his own. "This is not a permanent solution. The human mind is powerful, and dreaming is an outlet for many things. You should not use the coin consecutively for too long, or you may lose your ability to dream altogether."

Sam looked immediately perturbed, but honestly, Dean could imagine worse things. The kid glanced down at the coin in his hand, before closing his fingers around it. Meeting the angel's gaze, he gave a determined nod. This would do for now. "Thank you, Cas."

"Of course. Your safety is paramount, Sam. I will work on a way to block your mind more permanently the next time I return."

Dean heard the conversation drawing closed a mile away and fidgeted, knowing what it meant. "You have to head back, then?"

Castiel nodded. "I have likely been gone longer than is safe, for now."

"Do you need help plugging your body back in at Bobby's?" Sam offered, a smile on his face. Cas just shook her head.

"I will manage, thank you."

They continued to stand there as the silence got awkward, with Sam expecting the angel to disappear with a beat of invisible wings, and Dean kind of dreading when that went down (he was still not so comfortable with the angel out of reach up in Heaven, especially an angel prone to panic attacks caused by being in heaven out of reach). Cas herself seemed hesitant, which only made Dean's worry turn into justified anger.

Then those blue eyes dropped to his chest and the hunter found that anger somewhere down near his toes with nothing more than mild annoyance filling its place. He rolled his eyes hard enough it hurt.

"Oh for the love of-" He let out an annoyed growl-sigh-noise-thing-a-majig and closed the distance between the two of them. Dean grabbed Cas's hand and hauled it up to his chest, refusing to actually think about it. He absolutely ignored the flip-flopping in his chest as the Cas behind his sternum flipped and flopped excitedly at the connection. And he absolutely, _absolutely_ , ignored the raised eyebrows he could feel Sam giving them just over his shoulder or the poorly disguised cough.

He supposed it was worth it for the brief peace that stole over Cas's face.

And _then_ she was gone with a flap of invisible wings.

-o-o-o-

Sam was climbing into bed, tucking the coin beneath his pillow like a reverse-tooth-fairy trick, ridiculously relieved and looking forward to a good night's sleep, when Dean finally brought it up. Sam knew he would.

"You should have told me, Sammy."

The younger Winchester refused to tense. He'd known it was coming, and he didn't feel bad about how it had played out. Still, he didn't shrug, since he knew the nonchalance would just piss his brother off, and that's not what he wanted, either.

"Sorry," he offered, going for apologetic but pretty sure he missed. He probably hit somewhere in the snark range, given the words he chose to go with since he knew they'd knock his brother right off this train of thought. "I didn't want to interrupt your time with Cas, what with that crush you're working on."

Dean might have stayed angry (definitely was angry) if he wasn't too busy defending his honor as a man. "I do not- I don't- I don't have a _crush_ on Cas!"

The sputtering was particularly convincing.

"Uh-huh."

"It's _not_ a crush," Dean growled more fiercely. "This body is just… it's friggin' horny, alright?"

If Sam had been drinking that glass of water he'd just set down on the nightstand between the beds, he definitely would have choked on it. Well, better late than never for his big brother to finally have _that_ realization.

"And Angela is- she's- she's _hot_ , okay? With Cas's lost and not-quite-all-there look- It's not- _I'm_ not- Just shut up."

Sam didn't even have to say anything. At that point, he was just trying not to laugh out loud. Dean, meanwhile, threw himself onto the bed, pulling the covers up with unnecessary force, and turned his back on his brother. He was still grumbling under his breath as silence settled over the room.

He could let it drop, Sam knew. He really, really could.

Instead, he sighed and fiddled with the corner of the thin comforter.

"I needed time, Dean." His brother might hear only an excuse, but for Sam it was the truth. "I was _scared_. Terrified. I don't know what's coming next, okay? I don't get that benefit; I haven't lived through this and know it'll all be okay. And you just telling me it will be- All I know is one wrong move and I-" he choked on the words, staring at his hands in his lap as he sat on the bed, those feelings of hopelessness once more overwhelming- "-I end the world."

Dean rolled back over, propping himself up on his elbow. "It's not that black and white, Sam. It isn't all on you."

The younger Winchester picked his head up and met his brother's gaze. He knew Dean was trying to help, to comfort, but that wasn't really the point. "But this part is. Right now. With the blood."

Dean couldn't tell him it wasn't, which _was_ Sam's point. With a noise in the back of his throat – mostly frustration but also a decent helping of concession, the man from the future rolled onto his back and stared unhappily up at the ceiling.

"I get it. I can't say I know what exactly what you're going through but… I do get it, Sammy." He ran a hand down his face and tried to force all of the defeatist fear and just damn tiredness into resolve. It worked, sort of. Well enough, for now, for him to turn back onto his side to face his brother. "Still, we gotta figure out how to not do this." He waved his finger between them. "Secrets are gonna end badly for us, every time. And I know – I'm a hypocrite – but I'm trying too. We just gotta…figure it out."

Sam fell silent for a moment before stirring enough to lay down on the bed, still atop the covers. "How?"

Because Sam had needed that time. He hadn't been keeping a secret, he'd been…trying to process it so he could be in a place where he could even tell his brother to begin with.

It wasn't accusatory, just quiet. Still, it dug little claws in to Dean's heart all the same. He didn't like when he didn't have answers for his kid brother. It was worse with this version of his brother, because of the emphasis on _kid_. He'd never felt older and more like the protector he had always been charged with being. It was only time that would tell whether he did it better this time around or so much worse.

"I don't know," he admitted, quiet himself. "We've never been good at it. I guess we… I dunno, we gotta figure out how to be able to say stuff with no judgement. No criticism. And early on, cuz waiting only ever makes it worse, every damn time. So, you just… you tell me something because I need to hear it and that'll…that'll be it. No questions asked, and vice versa."

Easier said than done, he knew. He was thankful Sam didn't snort at the words outright. God knew, Dean wanted to himself. Like it could ever be that simple with them.

"Yeah." Sam's voice, still quiet, said as much, but he didn't outright call it out. He lolled his head to the side to meet Dean's eyes. "We can at least try it, right?"

Dean huffed, a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah. Let's start with that."

-o-o-o-

Sam slept that night with Cas's coin underneath his pillow and he didn't dream, of Azazel or otherwise. He didn't dream any night going forward. They carried a hex bag each wherever they went, and always had spares in the trunk. Dean tucked one up into the wheel well of Baby, grumbling the entire time about witchcraft getting anywhere near his precious car (which Sam countered by pointing out the contents of their trunk, one item at a time until Dean conceded with a classic _'Shut up, Sam, I'm grumbling here'_ and all was right with the world). The only reason he'd conceded to doing it at all was because it had been Sam's idea, and he was pretty sure the kid would have done it without his know-how if he'd said no. And that woulda just pissed him off, not to mention been a sort of secret, and they were trying _not_ to do that. Dean figured part of that meant not backing Sam into the kind of corner where secrets were necessary. So there he was, putting a friggin witch's bag of voodoo all up in his Baby and desperately not thinking about the poor violation she was suffering.

 _Protection, Dean,_ Sam had countered and again, _Shut up, Sam, I'm bitching over here and you're gonna let me or so help me-_

When he mentioned devil-trapping the car later that same day, Dean surprised him by just grinning rather than outright refusing to alter his precious car in any way. Nevermind the one spray-painted in the trunk (which had given Sam some hope that Dean might let put one in the cab), Dean just reached up and patted the roof of his car lovingly.

"What, you think I'd waste the perfect opportunity restoring her?"

Sam stared at the upholstery of the car's roof, the creamy beige that Dean had been able to mostly save from before the crash. He darted his eyes back to his older brother in disbelief. Dean just grinned.

"Carved one right into her frame. Put the headliner back on top." He moved his hand back to the wheel, looking damn pleased with himself. "Any demon shows up in this car, he ain't getting back out."

Which might prove troublesome later on with Crowley, but one in a million demons was decent odds to deal with. Plus, he never wanted that smarmy bastard anyway near Baby anyway, no matter how helpful he was on occasion or the weird I-sort-of-tolerate-you-and-sometimes-almost-even-like-you-but-also-hate-your-guts feeling he always got around the demon. Like he'd told himself when he was busy carving the trap on the underside of the roof: they'd burn or build that bridge when they got to it.

Sam just grinned, the expression one of obvious relief and Dean could tell he was thinking he shouldn't have doubted his amazing big brother. Sparing him the need to say it aloud, Dean said it for him and got a bitchface in return (and all was right with the world again).

-o-o-o-

Two days later, as Dean was coming back to the car with a bag full of burgers and rabbit food (and pie of course), his phone rang. He pulled it out of his jacket as he opened up the car door and tossed the food to Sam.

"Hello," he said as he climbed into Baby.

"So. Psychic, huh?"

Dean grinned immediately and couldn't help the laugh. "The clown show up?"

"I can't believe I'm saying this-" he could hear Ellen's amused disbelief, and it just made him grin more- "but yes, Dean, the killer clown showed up. Just like you said he would."

Oh yeah, there was definitely amusement in there.

Sam was giving him the kind of eyebrows that might as well have been poking him in the arm for answers by that point but he didn't bother giving any. The conversation was a short one, anyway.

"Sam and I are on our way."

He hit the end button and started the engine up. Sam was still staring expectantly.

"We're going to the roadhouse," he said by explanation and then turned that grin on his brother, cranked it up to shit-eating level just for kicks, and added, "We've got a killer clown on the loose."

The expression on his brother's face was totally worth it all over again.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/N**_ _: Aaaaaand we are_ _ **officially**_ _back in Season 2! FINALLY._

 _ **Delay Warning**_ _: I know, I know, this_ _ **suuuucks**_ _because the story has been on delay for months now. Trust me, I know and I'm right there with you guys. But I need the time (and planned time, not "Work's too busy or my stupid brain chemicals are stupid") to build my stockpile of chapters back up. I can't keep doing this week by week; I'm a slow writer and feeling like I have to write every day puts me in rut-land immediately. Then it's demoralizing when I inevitably fail and I make you guys wait. So, yes, I know the delay is the absolute opposite of awesome sauce but I promise the wait will be worth it._

 _ **Up Next:**_ _Season 2.1 (or Season Two, Take Two) We have a quicky with a killer clown for poor Sammy to deal with (and Dean's gonna be no help at all), Gordan Walker is just around the corner, Andy Gallagher after that (that jedi-tricking bowl of awesomeness in a robe with his polar bear riding Viking queen of a van). Not to mention more Ellen and Jo, the mother-friggin Croatoan virus AND GABRIEL! I mean, he'll be a while but he's in the line up. Home run, hitter, that one._

 _Season 2 is gonna be fun, guys :D_

 _ **Review:**_ _So no one really wants to review after being told there's *another* month delay coming, but please remember that I do much much much better with encouragement. If you've enjoyed the last 24 chapters of not-season-two-ness that have stressed me the mother-stressing stressor stressafied of all stressed outness (that's not even a full sentence, girl, let alone a thing), I would really really, really appreciate hearing it. For all you lurkers out there, this would be a good once-a-season time to review, kay? Kay._

 _And if you are excited for season 2, have requests or ideas about what you think is gonna happen, LEMME HEAR IT!_

 _As always, thanks for sticking with me._


	59. Season 2: Chapter 26

_**A/Ns:** Thank you to everyone who took my April Fool's joke in good humor (and sorry to those it pissed off). We are officially back now, though! I have a mostly-healthy stockpile of chapters (missed my goal a little bit; Jo Harvelle is turning out to be one stubborn little lady to write) but the next two months, at least, should see weekly updates!_

 _ **Chapter Warnings:**_ _Did ya miss me? Did ya, did ya? Let's be honest, we all know you're here for my silly little ramble at the start of each chapter. Don't be shy, you can admit it; I'm a comic genius (_ _ **snort**_ _)_ _We're kicking off Season 2.1 right this time (apologies again for my no good dirty rotten April Fool's prank), with Rakshashas, carnivals, and family feuds unfolding! We've a killer clown (poor Samy), but first, there's nothing like an excuse to go see the Harvelles! Plus, Azazel's back on the playing field, he's brought his bouncing baby boy along, and we kick off the mystery portion of our program right away as Hell's wrench-in-the-works makes her first Season 2.1 appearance._

 _Here. We. Go!_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 26

(for real this time)

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

They stopped at the Roadhouse first for intel. As impressive as Dean's future knowledge may seem to anyone else, he really didn't know most details when it came down to it (who would, ten years later. Was it eleven now? He'd been in this time for almost a year now. Damn. He really didn't know how to feel about that.) Memory on cases tended to be pretty hit or miss for him. The big stuff was usually a given, but the snippets he recalled here and there seemed entirely random, and never felt liked the important stuff they could really use.

The town the carnival was in could be any one of a dozen – Dean wasn't even sure it was in the same state as the Roadhouse – and the name of the traveling company was utterly lost to him over the years. So really, they needed Ellen's information. Plus, it was an excellent excuse to see the Harvelles, something Dean would never get tired of being able to do.

"Tell me it's not really a _clown_ killing these kids' parents," Ellen started with as she handed over the folder. The sharp red ink on the outside sparked a moment of déjà vu for the man from the future. He accepted it with an award winning grin Ellen just snorted at.

"Can't say for sure."

His answer was obviously bullshit, despite Dean trying to keep a straight face (Ellen and Sam's identically narrowed eyes gave his failure away pretty quickly). But he was having way too much fun to care.

The brothers didn't stay long; mother and daughter were getting the place ready to open for afternoon business and Sam and Dean didn't want to get in the way of their actual paying job. The four of them caught up briefly, with Ellen wanting to know how they were doing since their daddy's death and Jo curious about the hunts they'd been on in the two months since they'd last been at the Roadhouse.

"Asa was asking after you." Ellen changed the topic less than subtly as the two Winchesters started recapping what they'd been up to. Lately, she had taken a particular dislike to the overly eager gleam in her daughter's eyes when hunters started talking shop.

Dean straightened predictably, and Sam coughed something that sounded like _'man-crush'_ into his hand.

Ellen managed to look unimpressed and endlessly amused all in one half-lidded stare. "He wanted to get ahold of you boys. You alright I pass him your number?"

Dean's grip on the table top turned knuckle-white with excitement. "Yes!" he immediately responded, way too eagerly, and backpedaled almost as quickly. "I mean, yeah, sure, that's cool. You do that."

Jo snorted. "Smooth."

"Shut up," Dean snapped back. "Like you don't have his number on speed dial."

The bit of red that crawled up her neck was telling, but she rolled her eyes and her head with a huff anyway.

Ellen, however, was now regarding her with a look that screamed _'lecture incoming,'_ complete with the patented mom-hand-on-the-hip. "Joanna Beth, he is way too old for you."

Now Jo was sending Dean a death glare, but he only grinned and leaned against the counter, body language clearly saying _'good luck snarking your way out of that one._ '

"We talk about _hunts_ , mom. Relax."

Ellen eyed her daughter with a judgmental hum, expression possibly turning even sourer, but the woman let it be, turning to the Winchesters, instead. "You boys oughta head out. Catch the carnival before it closes for the night."

Dean tapped the rim of the folder against the counter with a nod. Right she was; they had almost an hour drive and the afternoon was getting on. Not to mention, Dean's plan kind of relied on their so-called 'clown' actually being around the carnival for them to take care of. He remembered the guy killed at night, but it wouldn't hurt to scope the area out and they definitely wanted to be there well ahead of his next planned kill. Dean handed the folder to Sam, who'd give him a reminder read-through while they drove (and fill himself in on things Dean either hadn't mentioned or didn't remember).

"I could go with you," Jo suddenly said, edging forward against the bar a little too tellingly, expression trying for nonchalant but missing. "If you guys need an extra hand?"

Dean opened his mouth to respond, Sam shooting him a questioning look, but Ellen beat them both.

"You have responsibilities here," she admonished, the look in her eye and the tone of her voice making it pretty clear this wasn't the first time they'd talked about this. It probably wasn't the first time they'd talk about it _today_. Dean had been present for some of those 'talks' and they usually involved more screaming than talking.

"Mom-"

"No, Jo. You're not going and that's that." Ellen might as well have physically put her foot down, for the overwhelming sense of finality in her words. Jo, arms crossed and face reddening in anger, didn't look like she was going to accept that lying down. "I'm sure the Winchesters can handle it."

Sam and Dean exchanged an awkward glance. That was their cue to go. Dean used the folder to tap Jo on the shoulder as they slipped passed. He kept his voice low and apologetic as he said, "Next time," but he knew he would have found a way to keep Jo out of the hunt same as Ellen.

He knew better, though, when it came down to it. Jo was going to start hunting, and soon, no matter what he or her mother had to say about it.

-o-o-o-

The carnival was just like Dean remembered it. Noisy, filled with screaming kids and the smell of stale peanuts, greasy food, and old hay. He was not disappointed in the slightest that they wouldn't be hanging around this one for long.

"Okay, but it's not _really_ a clown, right?" Sam asked, apparently continuing their conversation from the bar that Dean never had finished. When his older brother didn't answer again, he grabbed his arm, stopping him. The kid actually looked nervous and Dean was loving every second of it. "Tell me it's not actually a clown, Dean."

"Oh, it gets worse." The older Winchester offered a sympathetic smile. "The clown was abused as a kid. Never got enough hugs. The only way we were able to send him on was for you to give him one, giant, Samsquatch squeeze."

By the last word, Dean was barely even trying to keep a straight face and Sam glared at him with every fiber of his being. He didn't even manage fifteen seconds before he was cracking up.

"It's the blind guy with the throwing knives. He's a Rakshasa." Dean managed the words between full-hearted laughs, doubled over by his own shenanigans even as he waved in the Rakshasa's direction, tossing daggers over by the fun house. "Man, your face!"

Sam looked stormy, at best, a forehead free of wrinkles screamed high danger levels. "That's not funny, Dean."

"'Course you'd think that; you didn't see your face."

-o-o-o-

When he'd remembered the clown case was up-and-coming, Dean hadn't actually known what flavor of monster the blind dude was. There were way too many years of hunts between then and now for that knowledge to stick around. But knowing he liked to play dress up, ate mommies and daddies, and could go invisible (yeah, like Dean was likely to forget that funhouse of friggin' horrors), was enough to get him started. There'd been something about bugs, too, which helped. Even if Dean didn't remember what exactly, it helped narrow things down once he'd gotten a list going of possible monsters that fit the bill.

Which was why he and Sam were now armed with brass daggers, waiting just outside the carnival grounds after hours to take down a supernatural knife-thrower who didn't know they were coming this time. Not aware of hunters in the area or any new faces around the carnival, the not-so-blind guy (dressed in Sam's worst nightmare) was easy to catch off his guard on the dirt road that lead away from the back gate. Dean managed not to tease his brother for the way he stiffened – and glanced at Dean no less than three nervous times – when the clown suddenly rounded the bend and they had a stare off in the middle of the road.

The Mexican stand-off was not very Mexican and not very standoffish. The Rakshasha charged before Dean had even gotten the dramatic music going in his head.

-o-o-o-

He couldn't stop the grin stretched across his face if he wanted to, and oh, Dean definitely didn't want to.

"Like a little girl," he giggled, probably for the fourth time in half as many minutes. Sam glared at him something fierce and definitely pissy over the top of the Impala. Dean just laughed louder, opening the driver side door and climbing in. "I've heard girls scream less like girls, Sam."

The struggle had been brief. The clown hadn't known who he was dealing with, clearly. Sam took an elbow to the face, Dean skirted a throwing knife by less than an inch, but it ended with a clown dead on the ground, dagger sticking out of his chest.

Sam's doing, which his brother figured was probably pretty cathodic for the coulrophobic kid. All in all, a clean, quick kill, case closed. They'd be in and out in under seven hours, and five of that had been waiting around for the Rakshasha to leave the carnival in search of his next meal.

Dean couldn't have been happier to book it back to his Baby and slide inside before anyone happened by a pile of polka-dotted fabric, ruffles, and a clown wig in middle of the road, sans a body. It looked like someone had taken out some anger management on a piece of nineteen-seventy's couch upholstery. Rakshasha's died weird, man. At least they didn't have to deal with burying a body. He supposed they could have taken the time to toss the clothes, but it's not like anyone was going to call the cops on some discarded carnival dress-up.

By the time they got to the car, Dean was practically whistling. Playing roadie last time had not been one of his fonder memories, and he was beyond happy to be leaving the carnival behind with its cloying smell of peanuts, old straw, and animal piss. Sam, face red and murder still in his eyes (which had Dean cackling yet, even if that murder was definitely aimed in his direction currently), didn't bother answering the last of his brother's taunts.

God, he hated clowns.

"Tell me that's the only one."

Dean raised his eyebrows as he revved his baby's engine, spun the Impala around, and pulled back out onto the main road. He knew what Sam was asking (the kid knew Rakshasha's were lone wolves) and wondered how best to put it.

"Last one for now, probably not forever. How do you feel about exploding rainbow glitter?"

-o-o-o-

The Roadhouse door closed behind them and Dean breathed in deep. Ah, peanuts, stale beer, and good old human piss. Home sweet home.

"Joanna Beth Harvelle, don't you walk away from your mother!"

Complete with family feuding.

Sam and Dean exchanged harried looks, barely over the threshold of the bar and considering sneaking back out before they'd been spotted. But it was late – late enough that the only customers of the bar were passed out drunk on its horizontal surfaces (Ash, pool table, what else was new) – and Dean had kind of been hoping to crash the night there rather than find a motel. In another lifetime, Ellen had offered spare beds to them before. He figured the offer probably stood across time.

Now both Winchesters were kinda wishing they'd called her from the road and let her know long-distance that the clown was toast and all was right in the world (or, as right as it ever was.)

"When are you gonna listen to me, Mom? I could have helped them today – I should have helped them today!" Jo spun back around and Dean winced, realizing just what this fight was about. Not that the fights between these two women were ever about anything else. Still, he'd kind of hoped. He'd heard enough of these in his previous life to know exactly where they led. "Better yet, I could have handled that hunt on my own!"

Ellen was fuming, and both men could see the fear fueling that anger, clear as day. "You want to go and get yourself killed on some dusty back road, you find a different roof over your head, young lady. I won't allow it under mine."

"Maybe I will!" Jo bit out in rapid-fire, snapping back at the finality of her mother's sharp words. "I'm not a child. I want to go, I'm gone."

"You want to go somewhere, why don't you try goin' back to school!"

Dean knew better than to get in the middle of this. He _did_. But still…

"I didn't _belong_ there! I was the freak with a knife collection!"

"Ellen-"

Both Harvelle woman turned in surprise at the presence of the two hunters, having been a little preoccupied to notice their arrival. Ellen cleared her throat, wiping her hands on her bar apron and trying for a smile in their direction. Jo just crossed her arms over her chest angrily and made no such attempt to cover up her ire.

"Bad time, boys," Ellen bit out, clearly still pissed off, though the tilt at the corner of her mouth softened the blow.

"Yes, ma'am." Sam, ever the peacekeeper, placating hands raised up, one of them landing on Dean's shoulder. A clear nudge to leave this be.

Ellen's eyes lost a little more of their edge and she sighed. Forcing normalcy into her tone, she asked, "No more clown?"

Sam smiled weakly, trying to play along for their sake. "No more clown."

Dean, an expert on avoiding conversations he absolutely did not want to have, knew he should let this one go. But as he glanced over at that fiery young woman, his _friend_ , full of passion and fury and _life_ , he found that he just couldn't. "Ellen, she's gonna go off on her own, either way. It'd be a hell of a lot safer to have a home to come back to, someone ready to patch her up."

It was the wrong thing to say. Which Dean kind of knew – had definitely known – but there wasn't any other way to say it.

The older Harvelle woman's eyes shuttered into something dangerous, something mama-bearish that any halfway intelligent man with semi-decent survival instincts would know to run the hell away from. "Over my dead body," she bit out, and Dean flinched so violently Sam picked up on it right away. "And not to be rude, but you barely know us. This is a family matter; you got no business interfering."

It hurt. It hurt so damn bad, for so many reasons, in so many ways. Dean had that immediate sinking feeling he always got, particularly this past year, when he realized he'd made things worse again. And she was right. In this timeline, in this world, Ellen had known them for all of two months, and spoken to them only a handful of times.

The Dean Winchester that should be standing in front of her _didn't_ know them. Which pretty much just sucked for the Dean Winchester actually standing there.

"Dean," Sam muttered beside him, hand dropping to his elbow and tugging at his jacket. An even stronger suggestion they should leave.

"Maybe you're right," the older Winchester choked out, doing his damnedest to sound normal. To sound like his insides weren't cement and crumbling into pieces somewhere down by his boots. "I'm sorry."

Sam tugged on his arm again and Dean went without a fight.

As they left, they heard Jo turn to her mother, arms crossed over her chest and a pointed look in her eye as she spat, "Nice."

-o-o-o-

It didn't take long for Sam to ask. Dean knew he would, and was already working on a response he didn't want to give but knew he owed. Unfortunately, his mouth wasn't on track with his brain and he ended up shaking his head when nothing came out.

"You can't keep doing this," Sam replied, but he didn't sound angry. He sounded tired, pitying. Angry would have been better. "I'm not trying to start a fight, Dean, but you gotta talk to someone. It doesn't have to be me, but _someone_."

When Dean didn't answer right away – that whole mouth-to-brain thing still putting up one hell of a fight – Sam continued. "I mean, yeah, it might actually help if you talk to me, so we can be on the same page..."

Which, fair point.

"It's not gonna happen this time." Oh, great, _now_ his mouth had things to say. And they were the _wrong_ things. "I won't let it, so why tell you about it?"

Sometimes, Dean really wondered where his tongue got the nerve to work without his say so. Sometimes, Dean also wanted to bash his head into the nearest solid, vertical surface. Had he not _just_ agreed with himself that Sam deserved answers? Had he not, less than a week ago, told Sam they'd figure out how to stop keeping secrets?

"How are we supposed to stop it, if I don't even know what _it_ is?"

Again, _point_.

Dean tightened his grip on Baby's leather as he harshly – too harshly – put the car into gear and pulled away from the Roadhouse. He prayed to no one (it wasn't something to bother Cas with, and no one else out there worth praying to) that Jo wouldn't do anything stupid because of what he'd said. That time would keep things the friggin' same in _their_ favor for once.

"Jo starts hunting on her own, Ellen can't stop her. And later…" Dean let out a haggard sigh, running a hand down his face tiredly. It never failed to remind Sam of the extra decade weighing on his brother's soul. "They go with us on a suicide mission. Pretty sure the only reason Ellen came was because she sure as hell couldn't stop Jo, and no way was she letting her go alone."

Just saying it caused his chest muscles to tighten. He rubbed absently at the aching warmth in his sternum, wondering if this one was all him or if Cas had just as unpleasant memories of that night. He'd been the one to spend most of the evening with the women. A drinking game, if Dean remembered right, and they'd nearly run Bobby's house dry trying to get the angel drunk.

God, his chest _ached_.

"We were gonna stop Lucifer from raising Death. Shoot him in the head with the Colt and kill the son of a bitch devil once and for all." He heard Sam's sharp inhale, an inhale of _hope_ , and Dean's anger flared further. It wasn't _fair_ , the shit that had happened, the shit that might happen, and his job to tell his kid brother all of it. "It doesn't work. Turns out, there are five things that gun can't kill."

Dean pulled onto the interstate, keeping his eyes on the road as he continued, anger and guilt and decade old grief eating at him. "Jo got nabbed by a hellhound. Ellen went out with her to buy us time. And it was all for _nothing."_

Talking about it now, even years later, felt just as damn painful as that day. Dean didn't think he'd ever said it out loud before.

"Dean…" Sam sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose as he tried to frame the never-ending mess that was time travel within his own reference of understanding. Hunting, he knew. Running away from home and a family that wanted a different life for you, those things he could start with. The rest of it – the lost friends and an apocalypse...– well, he supposed he'd have to get there eventually. "Look, just because you have knowledge and a new found talent for advice-"

"Hey!"

"-doesn't mean people will listen." Sam angled him with a pointed, but understanding look. "Sometimes people have to make mistakes for themselves, no matter who tells them how it will work out. No matter how right that person may be. Sometimes we have to learn the hard way in order to learn at all."

Dean silenced for a moment, before growling low in his throat. Sure, he could see his brother's point, but what a pain in the ass! What was the point of time travel if people weren't going to let you change anything to start with? It was bad enough _Time_ was working against him, his friends shouldn't be adding to the problem.

"Yeah, well, _we_ know it's gonna happen this time," Dean said, loudly, clearing his throat before his brother could get anymore sentimental or comforting on him. Even if the comfort was appreciated (silently, of course). "So no matter if Jo goes off on her own, we won't take them on a suicide mission. No hellhounds, no bomb, Ellen and Jo keep breathing."

Beside him, his brother turned those pitying, puppy dog eyes back out the front window with a weak grimace, and Dean was grateful he didn't try and push it any further.

"Yeah." Sam's fingers were tight on the door handle, as white-knuckled and worried as Dean's own for a family he barely knew but really wanted to. "Yeah, we'll make sure of it."

-o-o-o-

The TV was on low in the motel room, a constant stream of character dialogue, commercials, and late night news casters that had been running straight for three weeks now. The steady noise didn't quite drown out the clacking of keys coming from the bed, where a laptop was spread out among piled blankets, scattered books, and yet another pair of mutilated jeans. Nor did it hide the jiggle of the lock and knob on the door before it opened on silent hinges.

The single occupant of the room – Sam's mystery woman and Hell's guest to an Apocalypse – didn't react as Azazel and another man filed into the room. The second was tall, broad chested in a tight black t-shirt, with dark blonde hair and cold eyes.

"Who's this?" She didn't bother looking up from the computer, continuing to type away. She didn't bother hiding her distaste, either.

"This here is Tom," Azazel answered as he crossed the room and set a plastic bag full of something rectangular and of decent weight down on the edge of the mattress. The woman spared it a glance, but nothing more. "My boy."

Tom smiled, all teeth and black eyes. She snorted.

"Demon." The word was like sludge along the bottom of a barrel. "What is it doing here?"

"He's here to babysit you." Azazel spared her a tight-lipped smile, holding a calming hand out to his side as his son got a little agitated with the creature's blatant disrespect. "And to get you anything you need."

Glowing green eyes finally flicked their way. "Need?"

"It's time to earn your keep." The demon's pale gaze dropped pointedly to the bag. "First task: reconnaissance."

The woman leaned over the top of her laptop to snag the plastic handles, pulling it towards her with a tight frown. "And the rest?"

"Will come in time."

She delved inside the plastic for only a moment, pulling out a paperback book quite unlike the others scattered throughout the room. It was smaller, for one, the print finer and cover more colorful. The frown tightened. "What is this?"

"It's called a book," Tom spoke for the first time, baring his teeth in what he probably thought was a smile. "You do know how to read, don't you? Or should we fetch you another professor?"

Her glare locked on his and the woman narrowed her eyes. "Only the bad words. Filth. Scum of the Earth. Petulant turd. I still require practice."

The demon just grinned.

"Tom will get you the rest when you've finished with those." Azazel nodded towards the bag and its remaining contents. There were four more books inside. "Read up. You'll be meeting Sam soon and I expect your performance to be perfect."

The yellow-eyed demon swept out of the room, leaving his child behind. Ignoring the remaining presence, the woman turned the book over in her hands, eyebrows raising at the two men illustrated on the cover. One of them was shirtless, long blonde hair blowing in a painted wind, as they stood in front of a black car.

Across the top, the title read, _'Supernatural'._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **Season 2.1**_ _:_ _Okay, so maybe not the most exciting or longest chapter to start with, but the next seven are pretty jam-packed, to say the least. (I'm actually pretty sure it's going to be the next fifteen - poor boys will not be getting a break anytime soon - I just haven't gotten that far yet :P And knowing me, my estimate is conservative, as always (verbose. as. fuck.))_

 _ **Tom**_ _: There was a demon at the end of the first season that Azazel identified as his boy but Dean shot him with the Colt before he ever had a line. Weird thing was, the demon was named in the script (only non-speaking character to be so that I've seen). I thought… huh, I wonder if Tom had more of a story once upon a time, and it just got cut from the final edit. Well, I can work with that!_

 _Welcome to the Island, Tom (aka replacement Meg)! Let's see how long he survives this time around :D_

 _ **Up Next**_ _: A case of severed heads and cow mutilation strikes déjà vu gold for Dean, so the boys head for Montana. Too bad they aren't the only hunter to catch wind of the case, though…_

 _Next chapter will be up on Sunday! Please review and remind me there's interest in this story, as it is what keeps me going :)_


	60. Season 2: Chapter 27

**_A/Ns:_** _Ooookay guys. This is me, giving you all a courtesy heads-up: please remember that I do not do well with silence. Between the two sites, 1400 people get an e-mail that this story updates (which is... so, soooo damn cool) But when only one percent of those people review (and I mean exactly 1%), my mind supplies aaaall sorts of nasty reasons. Like...Okay, clearly the April Fools joke pissed you all off? The last chapter absolutely sucked? Then I move on to excuses, because I know that's the depression talking, not reality: it was an irregular posting day and a weekday to boot, maybe not everyone has gotten a chance to read it, maybe because I deleted a chapter and reposted it, the site didn't send out e-mails? I do *try* not to be the depressed-paranoid-slightly-manic mess of a human being that I actually am, but having so few people put in the effort of a simple comment after I spent a month and a half of my life getting season 2.1 ready to post *isn't helping*_

 _I will never hold this story hostage for reviews; I think that behavior absolutely sucks. But I will be fair and upfront with you guys: silence makes me think I've done poorly and is an immediate downer for me. I can not and do not write when I'm down. Basic equation is: without people telling me they enjoy this story, I don't end up writing it. I'm a people-pleaser and an attention whore; it's a lovely combination that means I only do shit if I can see it makes other_ _people happy (which in turns leaves me puffing out chest feathers and preening like a damn peacock)._

 _I know these sites do not let you "like" individual chapters, so you guys can seriously just write "like button pushed!" in a review now and then, and the message that you are out there enjoying will be received!_

 _ **Those That Have Reviewed** : I am sorry you have to keep reading such things from me, but please know this message is not for you. And please do not apologize for not having reviewed every chapter or feel bad._ _I do not expect a review every chapter; it is simply very hard to know so many people read this story and so few are willing to let me know my work is enjoyed. But those of you who have are, quite literally, the reason this story is still going. And I mean that, 100%. I am not a self motivated person. This story, this chapter, is for you guys._

 ** _Chapter Warnings:_** _We've got severed heads and mutilated cows, Dean's now naming his Deja vu, and Time isn't giving the Winchester's even an inch. For extra measure, let's throw in a little Lilith and some more of Demon Tom being an ass because that, as we all know, is exactly what a demon named Tom would do._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 27

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The Impala door closed with the satisfying creak of well-loved metal, and Dean turned to look at court house in front of them. He gave Sam a wry look as they headed up white stone staircase of the mostly brick building that also housed the Sheriff's office.

"So two severed heads and a dozen cases of cow mutilation. And that sounded familiar?" Sam opened the front door, Dean entering first with a shrug.

"Not really much to go on. Could be half the cases we work, could be brand new. We'll just have to see." He'd told Sam as much that morning, as the kid read the newspaper aloud, circling potentials. The town had sounded familiar, and the particulars of the case not unfamiliar. It wasn't quite the sense of déjà vu he usually looked for when picking which direction to go next, but it was something. "Still think FBI would be faster."

"We don't need to go full-felony," Sam argued (not for the first time, likely not the last either), keeping his voice low as they passed the administrator's desk and headed for signs to the Sheriff. "Reporters raise fewer eyebrows and can get enough information to at least get us started."

Dean's brow pinched, that same not-unfamiliar tingling in his gut. He was starting to think of it as his spidey sense, only from the future. AKA: his timey sense. Sam had not been as amused, practically face-palming in the front seat, stuck in the car with his brother who had taken fifteen solid minutes of excited rambling about déjà vu not being unlike a tingling supernatural sixth sense, before landing on ' _timey sense'_ of all things. God help him.

"Gentlemen," the sheriff greeted them with a nod after the front desk gal escorted them into his office. Sam responded in kind, introducing him and his brother as reporters from some newspaper, but Dean was too busy staring at the man's mustache.

It was… well, it was something.

"Oh, we've definitely been here before," he muttered into his brother's shoulder, body half turned away to keep his voice quiet. Sam nudged him back to front and center because, well, not exactly _subtle_ there, Dean. The Sheriff was watching them with narrowed eyes.

"What newspaper did you say you worked for?"

"World Weekly-" Sam's arm across Dean's chest shut him right up.

"Weekly World News," his younger brother corrected, the _'Why me?'_ bitchface going strong (an offshoot, subcategory of #6, _'Am I really related to you?'_ ). He gave the LEO a grimace of a smile. "He's new."

"And probably not long employed." Dean offered a hundred watt grin of his own. "Now, what can you tell us about the recent cow mutilation?"

-o-o-o-

"Well, he was friendly." They were climbing back into the Impala after getting all but kicked out of the Sheriff's office. "I always love when we – _we_ – get lectured about how Satanism doesn't exist. Give it four years, buddy. You'll be singing a different tune!"

Sam ignored his brother shouting at the driver side window and the brick building beyond. He pulled up the case information they'd printed out that morning, staring at the autopsy report. "Coroner's office isn't far. Maybe we'll have more luck there."

"Yeah, yeah." Dean put the car into drive and pulled out onto the street. It took a second – about four minutes and three turns, actually – but eventually he realized Sam was staring at him. "What?"

"You said we've done this before?"

Dean shrugged one shoulder a little defensively. "Did you somehow miss the Sheriff's face caterpillar? Can't say we run into that every day. But hey, he's probably not the only Montana man with an impressive 'stache. And I'm not picking up anything major on the Timey Senses-"

"Don't call them that-"

"-so maybe, maybe not. Why?"

"Nothing," Sam returned lightly, going back to the paperwork. "It's just, I didn't give you the address for the coroner."

Dean slid the gear shift into park even as Sam said it. His brother blinked at him, the Impala idling outside the town morgue. The older Winchester leaned forward, staring up at the building sign through the windshield. "Whoa. Well…that's freaky."

"Little bit." Sam climbed out and Dean scrambled to follow.

"I'm telling you, Sam. Super powers!"

"Yup," Sam answered in that easy way that meant the little bitch was being sarcastic as hell. "If there ever comes the need to find dead people in Red Lodge, Montana, you're the man for the job."

Dean flipped him off as they entered the morgue.

-o-o-o-

"Son of a bitch." The man from the future (not that that fact was helping him much at the moment) pulled back from the severed head of a girl, propped in a plastic bin sitting on one of the autopsy tables. "She's a vamp."

Sam was giving the entire setup hazarded looks from the three feet away, a hand wrapped around his stomach and complexion a bit green around the gills. Honestly, Dean's comfort around a _severed head_ was giving Sam just as much pause as the appendage itself. His brother had just shrugged at the first look sent his way. Ten years was a lot of cases with dead bodies and missing parts.

"That, uh, that changes things," Sam muttered, surprised, as he shuffled over a little cautiously. He took the tongue depressor out of Dean's hand and lifted the girl's lip again to stare at the small, almost unnoticeable holes in her gums.

"You think?"

"Was the other vic a vampire too?" Sam set the depressor aside, expression thoughtful, the green fading from his face as curiosity and a case took over. One dead vamp could be a coincidence. But two meant a hunter, and twelve cases of cow mutilation meant a nest.

"Don't remember." Dean shook his head. They had no way of knowing, now. That body had been cremated well before they got to town.

Sam leaned against the edge of the table, watching his brother closely. "Those spider senses picking anything up yet?"

The phrasing may have been sarcastic, but the question itself wasn't.

"Yeah. Nothing good." Dean stared at the decapitated vampire as his stomach started stirring unhappily. This was familiar as hell, yet he still couldn't place it. He wished those twisting knots that spelled nothing but trouble would spell something more helpful so his brain could get on the same page as his déjà vu.

-o-o-o-

They hit up the local dive bar next to scout for unfriendly faces, or anyone who'd noticed something like that lately. They kept an eye out for the hunter variety, but Dean didn't spot anyone he knew, and hunters did know how to blend in when they wanted to. He didn't see anyone who stood out as a vamp, either. Not that those were that much easier to spot than hunters. The bartender offered up a couple suspects – hippies on a farm at the edge of town – after Sam offered him some monetary incentive.

Dean's déjà vu got worse.

"We've got company." Sam said it quietly, but Dean already knew. He'd already sensed the eyes on them as they left the bar. The feeling hadn't gone away, more than a block down the road.

The two brothers communicated in perfect silence, barely a physical sign of the conversation that passed between them. As they rounded a corner, they both broke into a run to make it to the next corner before whatever was following them caught up. Dean was expecting a vamp, so when Sam tackled Gordon Walker – the hunter drawing up short, spinning around in search of his disappearing prey – Dean was taken completely by surprise.

Son of a bitch. No wonder he was having déjà vu.

"Show us your teeth!" Sam barked, shoving the hunter by the shoulder. His back hit the wall and Sam kept him there, arm pressed across his chest.

Dean was the one with the knife pressed to the hunter's throat, body acting on auto-pilot even while his brain froze up. But now he didn't know whether to pull back or finish the damn job. Gordon caused them a hell of a lot of trouble once upon a time, and ended up a hunt himself after trying to kill Sammy, who knew how many times. Trouble was an understatement, and Dean didn't take kindly to _anyone_ who had it out for his brother, least of all this asshole.

Still, killing a hunter in cold blood wasn't a great idea, and it hadn't been so long ago for Dean that that kind of murderous bloodthirst sang through his veins like heroine. He wasn't eager to go back there. So he pulled away, sheathing the knife.

"He's not a vampire, Sammy. He's a hunter."

Gordon, arms raised and cool as a cucumber, fixed narrowed eyes on the older Winchester. "You know me? Cuz I don't know you."

Dean didn't answer right away, lip twitching with indecision. Knowing that any lie of who they were would only cause them more grief when Gordon actually found out, he said, "Dean Winchester. This's my brother, Sam."

Sam hesitated for a moment, glancing back at his brother with raised brows and getting an imperceptible nod in return, before he pulled off of the other hunter. Gordon huffed in disbelief, lowering his arms with a little chuckle. He straightened his jacket.

"Sam and Dean Winchester. Well, I'll be damned." He shook his head with a stronger chuckle. "You know, I met your old man once? Hell of a guy. Great hunter." Gordon lowered his head, eyes still locked on the two brothers. He probably meant it as consolation. All Dean saw was a threat. "I heard he passed. I'm sorry."

"Yeah, thanks." Dean cut him off before he could keep going, the dismissiveness in his tone standing out particularly strong to Sam, who was eyeing him warily. But Dean was utterly unimpressed with anything this son of a bitch had to say, to hell with the fact that he actually came across like a decent guy. Dean knew he wasn't, and had been fooled by it once already. How he'd ever thought of Gordon Walker as anything but a creep, he sure as shit didn't know now. "You the one taking out the vamps in the area?"

He knew he was, but after all this time, the man from the future was more than competent at this game.

"Yep. Been here two weeks."

"Did you check out the Barker Barn?" Sam asked, still unsure of Dean's cold disposition, but they had a job to do all the same and he knew how to follow his brother's lead. He'd pry answers out of him later.

Meanwhile, it took quite a lot of restraint on Dean's part not to tell him to stop talking to Gordon entirely. That asshole shouldn't even know Sammy's name, let alone be talking to him. But it would be a hell of a lot more suspicious than just dismissiveness were Dean to call him out on it. So the older Winchester gritted his teeth and stayed quiet, trying to remember how this went the first time.

They had ended up in a bar together, Sam calling it quits while Dean and Gordon got all chummy. Bastard.

"It's a bust," Gordon answered, a wry smile in Sam's direction. "Just a bunch of hippie freaks. Though they could kill you with that patchouli smell alone."

Sam, frowning, glanced at Dean. He just shook his head as minimally as possible. Gordon was a damn good hunter, though, even if he was also the scum of humanity. So he picked up on the silent conversation between the brothers.

"Look, I got this one covered, fellas." Gordon gave them a toothy grin. "Don't get me wrong, it's a real pleasure meetin' you, but I've been on this thing over a year. I killed a fang back in Austin, tracked the nest all the way up here. I'll finish it."

"We could help," Sam offered even as Dean opened his mouth to tell him sure-fucking-thing, hope you go and get yourself killed there buddy. He closed his jaw tight enough to hear his teeth squeak in his skull. Damnit.

"Thanks, but, uh, I'm kind of a go-it-alone type of guy." Gordon was still smiling, despite the growing tension between the three.

"You know what?" Dean cut in quickly, before Sam could say anything more. Maybe a little too quickly – both Sam and Gordon seemed a little started by it – but screw it. He was ending this now. "So are we. You seem to have this handled."

He gave Sam a pointed look – smile tight and eyes telling him to shut-the-fuck-up-and-play-along. Sam frowned in response, but Dean could tell he'd follow the lead. So he turned back to Gordon with as friendly a smile as he could muster. "We'll leave you to it. Besides, I hear there's a Chupacabra two states over. Maybe we'll check that out instead."

Even as he said it, Dean thought, ' _what?'_ But that was about as much thought as he gave it. Wouldn't be the first time he'd spewed lines like he was reading a script his conscious mind didn't remember. The joys of re-living the same days over again a decade later.

"Uh, okay," Sam said a little uncertainly against the heavy silence suddenly between them. Gordon's eyes were locked on Dean, a tight frown making him look dangerous. Sam glanced back and forth between them, but he stuck his hand out in an attempt to salvage whatever this was. "It was nice meeting you. Good luck with the hunt."

"Yeah…" Gordon hesitated for a moment, eyes darting back to Dean again, before he smiled at Sammy and returned the hand shake. "You too. Have fun with that Chupacabra."

Dean grabbed Sam by the shoulder and nudged him back the way they came. He didn't bother with a farewell, hoping they never saw Gordon Walker again.

-o-o-o-

The vampire hunter watched both Winchesters walk away, continuing down the street they'd first been on when he'd followed them from the bar. He'd been expecting hunters, though to be honest vampires hadn't been ruled out either. He hadn't expected them to be the Winchester boys, though. Hadn't expected meeting them to feel so…off, either.

And what Dean had said there, at the end. Gordon had just been about to open his mouth and say the same damn thing. He'd meant it as a joke – what was a little pissing contest between hunters now, anyway? – but the older Winchester had said it first. And not just a random, tossed-on-the-wind insult. Dean had used the damn same words – _word for word_ – that he'd had been about to say himself.

Gordon watched the two of them walk away, an uneasy feeling in his gut. He didn't know what the hell was going on, but he knew one thing for sure. He trusted his gut, and it sure as hell didn't trust the Winchesters.

-o-o-o-

As soon as they were back in the car, Sam was on him.

"What was that about? That was one of the few hunters we've ever met outside of Dad's contacts!" Sam sounded pissy, but Dean knew him better. He was more worried than anything else. "Why rush off? We could have helped him with the nest."

Dean was shaking his head before his brother was finished. "Not this one, Sammy. Gordon's bad news. We want nothing to do with him."

He glanced in the side mirror, looking for any signs that the hunter had followed them. He hadn't sensed anyone tailing them again, but he didn't trust Gordon Walker and he didn't trust Time as far as he could throw either of them (and considering one of them was a friggin' unattainable physics concept, that wasn't very friggin' far).

"We should get out of town tonight." And not stop at a motel like they'd been planning. Gordon could go and get himself killed by one of those vamps, for all Dean cared. Hell, he was half hoping for it. Would sure save them a lot of future pain. "Trust me on this one."

It was clear by the slant of Sam's eyes that he was going to need more explanation than that (and Dean would give it) but he didn't argue as he started up the car and pointed them away from Red Lodge, Montana.

-o-o-o-

It was later that night and two towns over, settling into a motel for the night, that Sam finally figured out why leaving Gordon Walker to his hunt bothered him so much.

"We can't always run."

Dean looked up at the words, delivered evenly. Sam wasn't looking for a fight, but he knew it could escalate into one easily enough, especially if they kept doing it.

"You said we let one of the vampires go last time. Because her nest was only killing cows. If Gordon finishes the hunt, she's dead. That's on us; we should have stayed."

"Sam, she was a vamp." Dean held his hand up before Sam started talking over him. "I know things aren't always black and white, alright? She may not have deserved to _die_ , but her nest was still calling a hell of a lot of attention to themselves. That's on them, not us."

"And the next time?" When the older Winchester just frowned, Sam continued, "The next time we're on a hunt you know ends badly, are we just going to keep running? Cas said we had to stay on the timeline-"

"Screw the damn timeline!" Dean was shaking his head. "Gordon tried to kill you in that timeline, damnit. Multiple times, and he got damn close to succeeding! That same timeline wants you dead, Sam, or did you forget? So no, I'm not putting you and Gordon Walker in the same _state_ if I can help it. If Time wants to say the same, she's going to have to _work_ for this one."

All good points, Sam could concede, but he had a point too. After all, what if that vampire they had saved went on to do something important? It could be something as minor as convincing one more vampire to go human-free. One more vampire they didn't face in the future. Maybe the vampire that finally took one of them down. Or someone they cared about. Or someone else vital to the future.

Time was a pond full of thousands of ripples. They couldn't afford to keep making more.

"We can't always run, Dean."

His brother sighed, scrubbing at his short hair. "I know, alright? We pick our battles. But this is one of them."

"Alright," Sam answered after a pause, yielding because he had every intention of keeping his brother to that compromise. It didn't sit right with him that they turned tail as soon as they knew a battle wouldn't go their way, and he had the feeling Dean wasn't planning on changing that strategy any time soon.

They were better men than that. Better hunters. If they were going to stop an apocalypse, they would have to be.

-o-o-o-

As luck would have it, Gordon Walker did not get killed by vampires that night. It had been one hell of a close call though. Close enough he'd even thought, for just the briefest of moments, maybe he should have taken Sam on his offer to team up. He'd shaken off the thought just as soon as the vampire who nearly took his head off was alleviated of his own.

He cleaned the rest of the nest out by dawn, burning the bodies and making sure none had escaped like in Austin. Then he packed up and left town, looking for his next hunt. A couple weeks of travel and killing eventually landed him close enough to the Roadhouse for a stop, and low and behold, it was poker night. He figured, sure, he could do with a little more cash on the side – the werewolf two states back and cost him a pretty penny in silver before he'd gone down.

They were several hands in, Gordon already on the up in both money and his companions' ire, when he casually dropped the Winchester name. It sparked a new round of conversation, a couple of the boys telling tall tales about run-ins with John. One man that Gordon didn't know well enough to trust stood up for him. Another muttered something dark that wasn't quite catchable.

"What about his boys?" Gordon asked, again keeping his tone carefree. "I met them a couple weeks back. They offered a team-up. Think I should have taken it?"

Anyone who knew Gordon Walker would have thought it a weird question. He didn't _do_ team-ups. But these men didn't. Or had a drink too many in them to notice.

A couple more stories got passed around – rumors mostly. Only one of them had actually interacted with John's boys. He'd kept them pretty tucked away, was the overall consensus. It wasn't the kind of information Gordon was looking for and he'd just about called it a bust when someone new spoke up.

"Dean's psychic." The voice hadn't come from their table, and Gordon snapped a sharp gaze to the man sitting just behind them, nursing a drink of his own. He was pretty far gone already, hiccupping into the beer as he took another sip.

"Bullshit." Steve Wandell – the man who had spoken in John's defense – glanced at the others for support. "Dean Winchester ain't no psychic."

"Heard Ellen say it herself," the man grumbled defensively, glaring their way. "Handed her a hunt – thing was confusing as shit – and she straight up called him 'bout it. He already knew all 'bout the damn thing. Couple hours later, Dean Winchester strolls in like he owns the place."

The poker table fell quiet as the men glanced at one another in shock.

"Well, shit," Ramsey Masters – a dunce of a man, but build like a brick shithouse – shook his head in disbelieve. "No wonder he hid those boys away. Bet John didn't want _that_ getting out."

The conversation turned to the hypocrisy of a hunter like that having a psychic for a son, how that must have put John's boxers in one hell of a twist and that the boy was lucky to be alive at all. Gordon stopped listening. The others didn't even notice that he wasn't laughing along.

"I fold."

The vamp hunter pushed back from the table amid minor outcry. Sort of cheap to walk out when you had everyone's money, after all. He tossed a couple of bills back onto the pile, pocketing the rest. On his way out he offered Ellen a wave and Jo a wink which wasn't returned. It never was, but he didn't mind much.

He left the Roadhouse, tossing his keys in the air as he went, a whistle on his lips and Dean Winchester on his mind.

-o-o-o-

Lilith was pouring over maps of North America, more specifically the four potential Hell Gates located across the continent. Azazel was correct; Fossil Butte Cemetery was their best option. It was the most accessible, the best positioned for getting demons into hosts quickly and efficiently, and there were at least two dozen seals primed and ready in the United States. Not to mention the entrance of Lucifer's cage this century had lined up on the east coast of the country.

One of the States' hell gates was clearly the superior choice for their plan.

If Fossil Butte fell, the backup was the one in Arizona. It was still within the boundaries of the country, so they wouldn't need to worry about getting hundreds of possessed humans across borders. But it was a tricky one to open, with multiple factors needing to line up perfectly and the timing damn close. Lilith had her best people on it, but still their success rested entirely on things outside their control.

The Canadian and Mexican Gates were the backups of their backups, and Hell's Princess was really hoping it didn't come to that. The gate in southern Wyoming would be _so much easier_. Which was probably why Samuel Colt had built a fucking hundred square mile devil's trap around it.

"I want forces on both backup gates, but put the larger contingent at Oaxaca." Her lieutenant shuffled the papers around at her command, writing a quick note down before he pulled out a detailed map of the Hell Gate located in southern Mexico.

"It's a long distance to travel, and that border will be harder to cross in mass without calling attention to ourselves," he commented blandly. Lilith didn't have a particular like or dislike of this soldier. He was good with the paperwork, fast to answer her commands and see her will done, and didn't seem terrified of her in the slightest. Which was probably what let him point out flaws in her plans without getting his head removed.

Useful, but it still pissed her off.

"The Slave River Gate may be closer, but it's in the middle of _nowhere_ ," she bit back, the challenge in her words more or less a reminder to him who was in charge. Not that he ever questioned it. Another thing that pissed her off. "We need available hosts. Line the men up for Oaxaca."

He jotted down another note in silence, gathered the maps in a shuffle, and peeled an entirely different paper off the top of the stack he'd been carrying when he entered the room. "The newest report from Azazel."

She took it harshly. That yellow eyed bastard hadn't checked in by blood for weeks now, and she was starting to take it personally. As she read the report, she went from being affronted to full fury.

"He's lost the Winchesters _again_?!"

Her lieutenant didn't even blink. He took the paper back. "Only the ability to track them. They appear to have warded themselves. Azazel has not been able to enter Sam Winchester's dreams in some time. It is unclear if he has found a way to ward his mind or is simply not sleeping."

"I _told_ him he was pushing Sam too hard with the blood!" She let out a howl of rage, kicking at the base of the rock-formed table and scuffing her little white shoe. They should have sent in Ruby. She wouldn't have messed this up so royally. "Get me our best demon for tracking humans. We'll find them the old fashion way."

"So…" her man finally hesitated, raising a bland eyebrow. "I'll summon Crowley, then?"

The Princess let out another enraged shriek, but braced against the rock table rather than break the entire thing in two like she wanted. He had a point, even if she was loathe to admit it. God, she hated that bastard. There was just something so… slimy about him, even for a demon. And lazy. And entitled! But…he did have all the connections they needed and the time he spent topside as the King of the Crossroads (a title he had given _himself_ )meant he was the best of those in high command to utilize human's ever developing technology.

"Yes, fine, whatever." She kicked the rock again for good measure. "And tell Azazel to move up his timetable. _Now_. I am done playing games with these hunters!"

Her lieutenant excused himself with a dip of his head and she went back to studying the gate just outside Gallup, Arizona. She was pretty sure the damn pagans had sealed that one up, if the level of tricks and riddles hiding the damn thing was any indication. Nuisances, the lot of them. But she had her best, the girl she'd been ready to set on Sam, hunting down the last of the Hopi gods and guardians, looking for an answer.

Another hour or so passed before Crowley was knocking on the smoldering stone entrance to their war room. She waved him in without even looking up.

"I need a way to track the Winchesters." As he opened his mouth, likely to deliver a rivetingly unhelpful and sarcastic comment, she clarified, "A human way."

"Have you tried microchipping them? It's all the rage with lost pets these days." He rolled on the balls of his feet, hands in his pockets and she considered breaking every last one of his fingers.

"A realistic option, Crowley. Now." Her snippiness never seemed to affect him much. Unlike her lieutenant, whose calm was unbreakable, Crowley just didn't seem to give a crap. It always rubbed her the wrong way. She wasn't stupid; the demon in front of her was intelligent. One of the more intelligent among the High Command. He just didn't seem to care about applying it for anything more than irritating the rest of them.

She didn't trust that either. No demon was _passive_.

"Do you have a number we could track?" he asked instead, shrugging half-heartedly. "Cellphones have GPS nowadays. It's quite easy, if you have the right people in your pocket. We just need a number to call, love."

She chewed on the inside of her lip, annoyed. She didn't need the _obvious_ answers. "We tried that; there are no numbers registered under their real names. They have to be using aliases. And we can't tap their friends' phones to wait for them to call. Most of them have warding on their landlines."

And no cellphones under their names, either. Damn paranoid, tax-evading hunters.

Crowley hummed, a thoughtful look crossing his face. Lilith raised her eyebrows at him and he gave her a tight lipped smile. "Hmm, I think I recall reading something in the prophet's work. Wasn't a number left in John Winchester's voicemail – one of the early books? You know, I believe there was..."

She hadn't gotten to read them herself – they had a hard enough time keeping their own paperwork from bursting into flames down here – but she'd personally slit the throats of the eleven demons she'd put on the task for missing that.

"It'll be a one-time shot, of course," Crowley continued. "Once they figure it out, Dean will surely change numbers."

"Do it," Lilith commanded with a nod. "Get Azazel the results."

He gave a mock little bow, and Lilith decided to put off ordering his assassination for at least another week. Damn demon always seemed to provide the right amount of information just when she was absolutely at her limit and would suffer him no longer. Slimy bastard probably did it on purpose.

-o-o-o-

The woman looked up from her book as Tom's cell phone rang. The demon pulled it out of his pocket with a taunting smile her way, which she returned with a sneer. He flipped the thing open and pressed it to his ear.

"Hello?" His tone remained neutral, and the woman could not hear the other side of the conversation. So it was with some surprise that Tom lowered the device, said, "It's for you," and tossed it to her.

She caught it with a fumble, having to hastily drop the last of the _Supernatural_ series, and practically snapping the device shut in the meanwhile. She shot him a glare, raising the phone to her ear, but there was nothing.

"Your sense of humor leaves so much to be desired." The woman snapped the phone shut and picked her book back up. She had no intention of returning the mobile device to the demon and far more interest in what happened with the reaper and the hospital.

"Oh, you have to dial first," he interrupted her reading again with a shark-toothed grin. "Don't you know how phones work?"

She glared at him, neither of them blinking since neither of them had the need, until she flipped the stupid thing back open. He was well aware she'd never actually used one before.

He smiled widely. "866-907-3235."

The number sounded vaguely familiar, which the woman found curious. She had no experience calling anyone (the phone in the motel had been conveniently disabled shortly before the Professor was brought in) and the only numbers she had heard since came from the television, and those were rare. Somehow, she doubted her babysitter was having her call one of those.

She pushed the buttons without taking her furious green eyes off of the demon, raising the phone to her ear. "And who am I calling?"

Tom didn't answer, but the owner of the number she dialed did. "Hello?"

The woman kept narrowed eyes on the smirking demon. "Hello."

"…Yeah? Who is this?" the man on the other end, suspicion now in his voice, sounded annoyed.

"Who's this?" she parroted blandly, still eyeing her keeper, who seemed content to lean back in the motel chair, crossing his arms behind his head. She was pretty sure she had seen this conversation occur on television. It had been funny then.

"Look, lady, you called me."

"Did I?"

Tom chanced a glance at his watch.

"Yeah, you did. Now what the hell do you want?"

The demon watched the seconds tick by before he gave her a thumbs up and then swirled his pointer finger in the air. She was unfamiliar with the gesture, but got the gist.

"Must be a wrong number." She pulled the phone from her ear and pressed the end call. The woman tossed the phone back to the demon, unimpressed. "What was the purpose of that?"

"Oh, just finding a wayward sheep." He sat up from his relaxed position, looking down at the phone like he expected a call. Sure enough, a moment later it started ringing. He flipped it open without so much as looking at the number. "Got it? Great. We'll see you there."

He stood, stretched his arms over his head until his back gave a loud pop, and then bent over to the duffle bag at his feet that he had brought with him the day before. He pulled a new set of fabrics out along with a pair of ridiculous looking things that the woman could only assume were shoes, given their vague foot-like shape, if one ignored the six inch _spikes_ protruding from the heel. She'd seen such nonsense on the television, and had wondered how the women (and that one man on that one very weird show she'd stumbled upon) had managed to walk in them.

"Get dressed, Princess." Tom tossed her the pile. "It's time to meet your Prince Charming."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **Dean's number**_ _: I take anything mentioned in the show as being written in the books. Apparently, while I was not part of the fandom in those first two years, the number listed in John's voicemail for Dean was an actual number the show set up that you could call, which went to a voicemail of Dean telling John to call them if he got this. It was eventually disabled, but I thought that was pretty damn cool. Gotta love those guys, they always go all out for the fans :D_

 _ **High Heels Bit**_ _: Okay, so that last paragraph was supposed to have an additional line at the very end about actresses in high heels, but I had to remove it due to chronology. However, I loved the line so much (and it gives more info about our mystery woman) that I think you all should get to have it anyway:_

"One actress had even run in a pair, chased by a large, lizard-like beast that apparently represented a dinosaur (if she had correctly understood the plot) but looked nothing like the actual creatures she'd once seen roam the earth."

 _I was so excited to put it in there because that seen in Jurassic World cracked me up and also because feathered dinosaurs for the win! But I *couldn't* because that movie didn't release until 2015. I actually didn't catch that until my third read through :P_

 _ **P.S.**_ _Since we're talking about chronology (and mistakes), a reviewer brought attention long long ago (and I've been so bad about getting back to people) to my use of Twilight jokes. S/He was correct that the movies did not come out until 2008 but by 2006 the books were in full swing and gaining mass popularity. So I figured it was fairly safe to keep using those jokes, as I can only imagine vampire hunters (Dean particularly) would find the idea of sexualized teenage sparkly vampires worth laughing about._

 _Keep keeping me on my toes, guys! I get stuff wrong all the time (and barely catch most of it last minute. Looking at you and those terrifying red heels, Bryce Howard!)_

 _ **P.P.S.**_ _I've kind of been assuming that you all either enjoy my little A/N rants and behind-the-scenes tidbits or just skip them if they're not your thing. But maaaybe someone should tell me if they're annoying, because I can also cut them out. As if the A/N rambles at the start of each chapter weren't hint enough, I am a *little bit* of a chatterbox. (Just a little ;P)_

 ** _Reviews_** _: "Like button pushed!" There, you can even copy and paste it now :P Come on, guys, Gordon Walker thinks Dean is the psychic this time around! That means he's gonna try and kill HIM, not Sam, and Dean has no idea it's coming! Yell at me about it! I've got chest feathers that need preening! XD_


	61. Season 2: Chapter 28

_**A/Ns:**_ _Whelp, I feel both vindicated and like a jerk. I appreciate those who piped up in regards to my request for comments/like buttons! I also knew (I really, really did, in the part of my brain that isn't lying to me all the time) that there were probably reasons for the silence. Good reasons, even. The best reason, though, didn't occur to me at all. I'm sorry for getting cranky at you guys for not reviewing when a decent chunk of you were busy re-reading the story . That's, uh, that's a pretty damn good reason. My bad, y'all._

 _Keep "pushing" that like button now and then, please! :D_

 _ **Chapter References:**_ _If you do not recall the unofficial deal/truce/"I'll scratch your back, you give me a hand job" partnership the boys entered into with Crowley, refresher course can be found in chapter_ _ **51\. Season 2: Chapter 18**_ _All you really need to remember from it is that last bit, though ;D_

 _ **Chapter Warnings:**_ _The boys are drinking beer and playing pool while Hell's making its first, second, and third counter play, and Crowley's lining himself up for a hand job. :D_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 28

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The bar was noisy for a Thursday night, but being one of only a handful of bars in town – a college town, mid-summer, no less – and certainly the dive-iest of those establishments, meant there was almost always a particular clientele available for drinking and billiards. And tonight, Dean and Sam were taking advantage of that.

The older Winchester slid back into his chair with two pints and a grin from ear to ear.

"Did you get anything other than the bartender's number?" Sam, droll as always, asked with a sardonic eyebrow. Dean pffted.

"I'll have you know, I'm a professional." And he _was_. A thirty-something professional in a twenty-something body that still occasionally (more than occasionally) thought it was a teens-something body. Seriously, he'd had to crank one out that morning. Even late twenty-something was _ridiculous_. So he waved the napkin in front of his brother's face, the bartender's number written in fresh blue ink. "I got her number _professionally._ "

"In case she 'remembers anything useful'?" Sam's tone said pretty clearly what he thought of that, and Dean pfft'ed again.

"You're no fun." He leaned forward into the table, chest coming close to the foam-topped glasses of beer. "You remember fun, Sammy? It's that thing you do, with girls?"

"That's sex, Dean."

"They're synonyms." The older Winchester looked personally offended, pushing his brother's drink across the table to him.

Sam rolled his eyes, taking his beer and casting eyes around the bar again far too nervously for Dean's taste. "You remember why we're actually here?"

It was the older Winchester's turn roll his eyes, but he supposed Sammy had a point. Despite the cute (and promisingly loose) bartender, they were out on a Thursday night indulging in alcohol and (maybe) women, and for once the reason wasn't a celebration of a hunt well done.

-o-o-o-

 **-Twelve Hours Earlier-**

The knock on the motel room door was not exactly expected, but it wasn't a surprise either. It was late enough for housekeeping to start making rounds and Dean had made a pretty pointed comment to the manager on their way in last night that their towel quality left much to be desired. Like, four inches of coverage and about a half inch of thickness.

The face that greeted Dean when he opened the door, absentmindedly rubbing at his chest as he did so, was a surprise.

"Morning, Squirrel. Where's Moose?"

Well, at least that explained the aching sternum.

Sam, fresh out of the shower with only a towel around his waist, nearly dropped his toothbrush from his mouth as he came out of the bathroom in time to see Dean standing in front of the open door with none other than the King of the Crossroads smiling way too charmingly on their stoop at nine in the morning.

"Ah. There he is. And he comes with a view."

Sam definitely, _definitely_ , didn't blush. The demon, however, grinned that much wider, and Sam's forehead did that _'Danger, warning, abort, abort!'_ bit where it smoothed completely out and brown eyes turned murderous. But his cheeks were still dotted that lovely shade of red and the King of the Crossroads wagered, eh, _worth it_.

"Crowley?" Dean asked incredulously, like he thought maybe his eyes were tricking him. As Sam hastily went for a clean set of clothes, Dean leaned out into the corridor, looking left and right like he expected to find Ashton Kutcher and a camera crew. "What the hell are you doing here?"

The demon, after checking the floor and ceiling for any tricksy devils traps, invited himself into the room. With an annoyed look and a sweepingly sarcastic gesture, Dean closed the door behind him.

"You ask for my number, but you don't even call. Really, Dean, I'm insulted." Crowley eyed the heavily fish-themed décor of their most recent crash pad as Dean crossed his arms over his still-aching chest, thoroughly unimpressed. Not like Crowley had actually _given_ them a number to call. (Not that Dean would have called, anyway.)

"Well, this is homey." The demon turned to face them, hands in his pockets. "Azazel is looking for you."

"Tell us something we don't know," Dean said as Sam also replied, "Because we went off grid."

"Oh, but it does come with such nice surround sound." Crowley raised a hand to tap his ear mockingly before strolling about the small room, poking at this and that. It was hard to say which brother rolled his eyes harder. Ignoring them both, the demon settled at the little kitchenette, where Dean's cell phone and their duffel of weapons lay open on the table. The demon felt both hunters tense behind him, so close to so many things that could kill them easily. It was Crowley's turn to roll his eyes – though he did enjoy their oh-so-delectable fear and distrust – and he reached out to tap a finger loudly on the phone casing. "Not off grid enough, it would seem."

He gave them a pointed look and Dean frowned, brain turning over as Crowley's hint found home base.

"Shit," he grumbled, and Sam sent him a questioning look. "That woman who called. The 'wrong number'?"

Dean remembered thinking it was weird. He hadn't recognized the number or the voice, which had been slightly accented. An odd one Dean couldn't place. Something vaguely Jewish, but like middle-eastern, old-time Hebrew Jewish, not Larry David with his putz and his schmucks and his bald-headed American Jew glory. Nothing worth reporting to Sam, especially once Dean decided the whole thing was weird but not outlandish. He'd written it off as nothing more and the brothers had gone on with their day.

The hunter now turned to Crowley. Realization dawned on Sam's face as the older Winchester asked, a little miffed, "That was one of yours?"

The King of the Crossroads shrugged. "Azazel's, not mine. I'm just the messenger. Speaking of, I am going to have to give him something, so..." Crowley mockingly spread his arms in a regal, sweeping gesture. "I'm here as a courtesy heads up. This is me, scratching your back, boys."

Sam grimaced as he recalled the rest of the saying Crowley had mutilated that night at the crossroads. The demon just grinned, all smarmy. He swiped Dean's phone off the table, punching a couple of the keys before tossing it to its owner.

"I'll call when I want that return favor."

Crowley sent a wink Sam's way, enjoying as the brunette definitely didn'tblush again. Dean caught the phone with yet another unimpressed glare (Crowley had been right, he was going to see that look a lot now that they were 'partners') and glanced down at the device. The demon had entered his number under the name _'The King'_. Dean rolled his eyes yet again, but Crowley was already gone.

Sam eyed his brother and the phone in his hand like it might detonate. If Crowley was telling the truth – and what could he possibly gain from lying about this? – then Azazel would be on his way shortly, and that meant nothing good for them. For Sam. "What do you want to do?"

The man from the future stared down at the small screen for a minute, long enough for it to darken, before he tightened his fingers around the plastic. His brother's lecture about running away was still pretty fresh in his mind. "We trap the room. Leave the phone here, spend the day on the hunt, like we would if we didn't know. Tonight we'll waste time at a bar."

And when they came back, maybe they'd have a yellow eyed bastard caught in their snare.

-o-o-o-

 **-Present-**

Dean eyed his moody brother before he leaned back in his seat, using it as a convenient move to scan the crowd around them. No one seemed particularly suspicious. No one watching them. Dean had hoped Azazel – or whatever flunky he sent after them now that Meg had eaten a bullet – would either fall into their trap at the motel or realize they weren't home and wait for them there. But, he supposed, one of the reasons they'd kept to strictly public places today was in case they were followed. The college town wasn't huge, and while it might not have been easy to find any one random person among the several thousand living here, hunters weren't all that hard to locate when they were on a hunt.

Court houses, public libraries, cemeteries, morgues, the cheap motels. And bars.

Still, no one stood out, and Dean didn't see any point in wasting the evening just because demons _might_ be on their tail again. He wished he could get Sam to loosen up a little, though. Kid was wound tighter than a girdle on a Baptist minister's wife at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. And yeah, alright, he had some fair reasons to be that high-strung. But Dean also knew from experience that stressing about the shit-storm perpetually about to rain down on them didn't change when or where that raincloud dumped.

Besides, they were supposed to be playing innocent, here. Acting normal. Blending in. Sitting there, externally brooding and internally panicking wasn't exactly the ticket.

"I'm gonna go make some cash," Dean announced, grabbing his beer and standing up from the table. Sam eyed him like he was crazy. "Next rounds on you. And try to relax, will you? You look more suspicious than anyone else in here! Fidgeting like a tween who forgot his fake."

Sam watched, mildly insulted and trying to stop his anxious movements, as Dean lumbered off to the billiards table. He watched the first game, his brother setting the stage as the out-of-towner well on his way to being drunk. Sam idly traced the logo on his pint glass and worked on not glancing around the bar every ten seconds. Dean was right; a demon would be crazy enough to approach them in this public a space.

But the younger Winchester didn't trust Azazel to be _sane_ , either.

Realizing he was doing nothing but warming the beer, Sam finished it in a single chug – it was more Dean's flavor profile anyway and not particularly strong – and headed for the bar for something that might take the edge off. He wasn't a fan of that page in his brother's book, but he couldn't seem to lose the nervous twitch of his fingers or the way his gaze jerked to every loud sound in the crowded bar. Maybe a little liquid courage would help him do as Dean said and _relax_.

He waited at the bar for his drink – something stronger than Dean's pick but nothing to lose his wits over in case there was a demon waiting for them back at the motel – when he realized the guy next to him was staring. Sam glanced over, but there was nothing particularly remarkable (or suspicious) about the blonde. Except maybe his choice in strappingly tight black t-shirts. Sam gave him a grimace (the kind of smile that said _'stop smiling at me before I punch you'_ ) and angled away from him none-too-subtly. He felt the guy's gaze on him another moment longer, long enough for Sam to consider muttering _'Christo'_ under his breath just to be sure, but then the bartender returned with his drink and he, thankfully, left the bar and Mr-I-Wear-Shirts-Two-Sizes-Too-Small behind.

Only to crash right into someone. Sam winced at the sound of breaking glass and the cold slosh of a drink splashing over his hands.

"Shit!"

He looked down at the person whom he'd crashed into (who had crashed into him?) and had to look a lot further down than he anticipated.

"Shit, I am _so_ sorry."

It was a woman, and she was _short_. Well, everyone was short compared to Sam, as his brother reminded him often. But she was particularly short, top of her blonde head not quite making his shoulder as she swapped the broken cocktail glass in her hand for the napkin that had been wrapped around it. Sam didn't even realize he was bleeding until she'd taken his free hand and started dabbing at the small cut just above his thumb. Her drink must not have been particularly strong – the alcohol dripping off his fingers didn't even sting.

"Shit," she swore again.

Sam couldn't help but laugh. Her fingers were warm on his, almost tingling, actually, and the hunter felt tension ease out of his shoulders and away from his mind like a handful of water he couldn't hold onto. As she dabbed at the cut, he received a glare – probably for laughing – but there was no heat in it, and it made him grin wider.

She had blue eyes to go with her blonde hair, and the immediate reminder of Jess threatened Sam's smile. The love of his life had glared at him like that, too. Only, she'd done it from about six inches higher.

The woman's grip still tingled and he laughed again, the painful thoughts drifting away like the rest of that handful of water. He felt lighter than he had in days. Too light to question it, actually. Maybe he'd grabbed a stronger beer than he'd thought.

"It's alright." He set his glass back down on the bar behind him, ignoring Mr. Tight Shirt, who was watching their commotion. Sam took the broken glass out of her hand and set it on the bar as well, even as she kept the napkin pressed to his injured one. "No harm."

"You're bleeding. I think that counts as at least some level of harm."

She had an accent; it was subtle, but Sam was used to picking up things about people quickly. Yiddish, maybe, though he was hardly an expert ear. It was unique, whatever it was.

The woman pulled the napkin away, examining the cut which had already slowed to a sluggish smear. She seemed to think about it for a moment before she relinquished his hand. "I suppose you'll live."

"I sure hope so." Sam chuckled, reaching back for his beer and shaking the last of her spilled drink off his fingers, ignoring the cut. It was minor – practically nothing – after all. "Can I get you a replacement?"

"Shouldn't I be buying you a drink?" The sass in her tone was nothing short of _adorable_ , as was the way she crossed her arms over her chest, stance wide like all five feet, two inches of her were ready to fight him on it. The hunter had a feeling she'd kick his ass if he voiced as much, though. He also entertained the thought she might even succeed.

Short, but _fierce_ , Sam noted with a grin.

"Mine didn't spill," he countered teasingly, raising the glass in a toast. It wasn't until he was taking a sip that he realized, with a mental jolt, he was flirting. That was what people did, in bars, at night, when they randomly bumped into each other, wasn't it? It was with a second jolt Sam realized he didn't feel nearly as bad about that as he thought he would.

He shouldn't though, should he? He wasn't cheating on Jess because she wasn't waiting on him. Because he wasn't coming back. And there was nothing wrong with a little flirting. It's not like he had any intention of turning this into something more. Just…enjoying himself, was all. Loosening up, like Dean said.

Plus, it was a good distraction from his current worries, which…didn't seem so worrisome right at that moment. Maybe his brother had been right; he just needed to relax. A distraction to get his mind off what he couldn't do anything about.

An… aesthetically pleasing distraction, he wasn't too shy to admit. She was cute: stout and curvy, in a tight black skirt and a sequined top that dipped low on a modest chest. Sam actually thought she looked uncomfortable in the shirt, like maybe it itched. He sympathized, even if he found it amusing. He particularly liked the pair of sneakers on her feet and what looked like some sketchily drawn eyeliner on her features which she'd tried to rub off instead of fix. Like she'd given up getting ready for the night halfway through the process. He could appreciate that in a girl.

"I'm Sam," he introduced himself, sticking out his "injured" hand.

The woman had a firm grip that matched her eyes and stance, but soft skin, and opened her mouth. Whatever she said in reply, however, was lost in the din as billiard balls smacked loudly into one another with a sharp break. Dean's triumphant cry of success – among a racket of anger – blocked out just about any other sound in the bar. Sam looked over at the pool table, where his brother was wearing the grin that usually got him punched or thrown out of places like this. More often than not with a wad of cash in his pocket.

The younger Winchester shook his head and turned back to the woman in front of him, trying to decipher what he'd made out through the noise. "Sorry, did you say 'Stephanie'?"

The corner of her mouth crooked up at him like he'd missed the inside of a particularly good joke. Before he could ask what that laugh might be, she said, "Call me Steph."

He nodded and glanced over his shoulder at the bar, Mr. Tight shirt no longer paying them any attention and the bartender off at the other end. Her broken glass had been taken away. "Are you sure I can't get you something?"

That smile turned more genuine. "No, but thanks. I was on my way out when I bumped into you. I should get going, actually. It was nice to meet you, Sam."

"Yeah, you too, Steph." Realizing that was that, with Stephanie already turning towards the door, Sam started forward a step and awkwardly tacked on, "Maybe I'll see you again? Uh, around town, I mean?"

 _'Jesus, just ask for her number, ya wuss!'_

God, he was bad at this. He was really bad at this if his inner Dean was the one giving him advice. Granted, he hadn't had to deal with flirting in years. As is brother would tell anyone who would listen, he'd never been that great at it to start with.

She laughed and now he was certain she was making fun of him. "Maybe you will."

Still, he didn't really mind as she winked at him playfully and headed for the door. His hand was still tingling and he couldn't help the grin, despite his obvious fumble and overall awkwardness. Ah well, she'd been nice enough to meet. A good distraction, however temporary. He watched her disappear amid the bar crowd, then headed back to his table, drink in hand and worries temporarily forgotten in lieu of blonde hair, blue eyes, and a wicked smirk.

-o-o-o-

As Sam Winchester worked his way back through the establishment, the woman watched from the far end of the bar, path to the front door abandoned as she tracked the boy's progress. She glanced down at the cocktail napkin still in her hand, dotted red with his blood. False blue eyes glowed green for only a moment as she lifted the paper to her lips and sucked on the still fresh life force.

-o-o-o-

Dean got back to their table not long after Sam, neither bruised nor thrown out for once, with a fresh wad of cash in his hand. "Barely even had to shark them!" he announced gleefully, stealing Sam's beer and taking a hearty sip, much to his brother's protest. "Locals were over confident all on their own."

The older Winchester paused in sliding the glass back Sam's way, eyes narrowed on the kid. He had a goofy grin on his face and, even as he shook his head, he glanced over his shoulder towards the bar. Dean's eyebrows climbed towards his hair.

"I know that look. Did you get her number?" He scanned the place immediately, looking for whatever hottie got that stupid smile back on his brother's face. Sam just glared and Dean scrunched up his nose in defense. "What? Come one, are you gonna be celibate the rest of your life? It's been, like, ten months!"

"Eight and a half, Dean."

Green eyes narrowed as he eyed his brother up and down. "How are you even still alive?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Excuse me for not getting over the love of my life on a schedule more convenient for you."

Dean baulked, but it was mostly for show. He didn't bother digging back at his brother. Truth was, he may be twenty-seven years old again, but in actually, he was pushing the big 4-0 and he knew it. Even damn fine at thirty-eight and plenty capable of gettin' some (and unashamed to own it), Dean really hadn't gone after women like he used to. Not since Lisa.

 _'Yeah,'_ he thought, watching his brother with more understanding than he cared to admit. _'I feel you, kid.'_

Of course, that didn't stop him from beaming the trademark Dean Winchester, 100-watt, I-am-your-older-brother-and-I-live-to-tease you smile. "So, did you get the standard seven, or did she give you a little five-digit action behind the bar?"

Ultimately, Sam decided his brother was missing a little bruising after all.

-o-o-o-

When the back door of the bar opened, the older man leaning against the side paneling in his worn jeans and farmer's flannel looked up from idly picking his finger nails. His eyes slitted yellow as a blonde haired, blue-eyed woman exited the bar, reaching up to silver charm hanging around her neck as she spotted him. Azazel pushed off the side of the bar with an expectant grin. "So what do you think? Some grade-A material right there, no?"

She yanked the necklace off, little silver charm dangling in the street light. Blonde hair bled into black, pale skin darkened to brown, and pretty blue eyes were overcome by an angry, glowing green. The woman chucked the jewelry at the demon, who caught it with a lazy smile, looking at the clever little thing.

"His blood has something foul in it." She crossed her arms over her chest, glare full of an unknown accusation.

Azazel pocketed the necklace. "Is it going to be a problem?"

Her eyes narrowed further, but his expression gave nothing away. "No. He is compatible."

"Great." Azazel started up a whistle as he turned his back to the bar and started across the parking lot.

"You realize this is not how it is done." The demon paused at the acerbic words, looking over his shoulder at the woman, her stance wide, hands fisted. "The ritual has never been performed on an adult."

Azazel turned fully around now, regarded her with a cant of his head, before he strolled almost nonchalantly into her personal space.

"Are you saying you can't do it?" His eyes flashed yellow as he loomed over her. "Because if you can't hold up your end of the bargain..."

"I am saying," she ground out between clenched teeth, "it has never been done before."

Azazel raised his hand and, were they human, it might be easy to misinterpret his intentions. A passerby might think he was readying to slap her. Instead, the demon twisted his wrist in an elegant little swirl and the thin gold chain from the motel reformed, this time around her neck, a length of slack dipping between them to connect to his wrist in a delicate little loop.

Those green eyes glowed fiercely, but she did not retaliate.

"I am sure I don't need to remind you of our deal, Princess." The demon lowered his hand, the little chain jingling. "You do as I say, you stay topside. If not, you got back into your hole."

"You going to drag me back yourself, _demon_?" She spat the word at him, fists tightening. Not that he had anything to fear from so mundane a weapon, or, indeed, any weapon she possessed. But, then, he hadn't sought her out for a weapon.

"Oh, I won't need to. A well placed rumor here, a little whisper there. I'm sure news of your freedom would reach those pesky uncles of yours in no time at all."

She might have hid it well, but Azazel was good at recognizing fear, and the woman reeked of it, soaked in fury as it was. Finally, she finally looked away. "I can do it."

"Great!" Azazel turned and started across the parking lot once more. Behind him, the woman frowned and did not move.

"Am I not binding him tonight?"

The demon didn't pause this time, already impatient as it was, and popped the last consonant as he answered, "Nope!"

"Why not?"

Azazel let out an aggravated and dramatized sigh. He stopped once more and turned back to the infuriating woman, though he maintained the space between them this time. More often than not when dealing with her, the demon wished he could strangle the creature to death. If he approached her now, the temptation might just be too strong.

They should have raised one of her siblings. If only Lilith had known where any of them had been buried instead.

"I don't believe questions were included in our deal."

Green eyes narrowed, that fear that had been so sweetly pungent moments before now cleverly hidden behind ferocity. She closed the distance between them, coming within his space, this time. He could appreciate the gall.

"Neither was my silence."

With that, she pushed past him and away from the bar, leading the way. Azazel grinned something feral, and decided maybe, just this once, he could strangle her after all. It's not like she'd die from it. The demon followed almost lazily until he'd caught up (his current host had significantly longer legs). He grabbed her by the elbow and then they were no longer outside.

He deposited her on the motel bed, enjoying the way she yelped as she nearly bounced clean off. Azazel unwound the chain from his wrist, securing it around the foot of the nightstand once more. With another wave, it disappeared from her neck and reformed around her ankle.

"Task number two is to watch the Winchesters. _From afar_." Picking the last of the _Supernatural_ books off the bed, he tossed it into her lap just as she resettled on the mattress. He waggled a pointer finger at her. "No getting close, and no binding."

"How am I supposed to do that without the bond?" she spat back, tossing the book onto the covers. "They're _hunters,_ and I am not invisible. They're going to notice."

Azazel just grinned, all teeth. "I'm sure you'll figure something out."

With that, he turned and headed for the door, reveling in the fury radiating off of her. He supposed if he couldn't kill her, he could at least infuriate her as much as she did him. He left the motel room to something between a growl and a shriek from the creature, who scooped up the book and chucked it at after him. The _Supernatural_ novel hit the back of the door as it closed behind him.

The woman sunk back onto the bed, crossing her arms and cursing the demon aloud in every language that she knew. It took a good long minute. She knew many languages. As she finally simmered, green eyes drifted down to the book, bent open and laying haphazardly in front of the door.

Huh, she thought, staring at the innocuous little thing. There was an idea.

-o-o-o-

The ringing coming from his jacket was hard to hear over the din of the bar, but Tom could feel it vibrating where his coat hung on the back of the bar seat. The demon set down the cocktail glass he was admiring, broken and jagged from the hit it had taken earlier that evening. Blood still stained one side, drying from where it had pierced Sam Winchester's skin. Tom grinned at it as he pulled out the phone, placing it to his ear without checking the number. Only one person had it, after all.

"Father."

"Tail the Winchesters." Azazel's voice was tinny through the speaker, particularly difficult to hear amid the noises around him, especially if one was human. But Tom was not. The demon glanced over his shoulder, spying the brothers at their table across the bar. "Don't engage and don't get caught. We're too close to the finish line to drag anyone's ass back out'a Hell. You get exorcised, you get left."

"It won't be a problem; I tagged their car. I can follow them from the motel."

"Unless they find the tracker." Azazel's voice was cold, unimpressed. "Do not underestimate them. Your sister made that mistake."

"I'm not her." Tom picked up the glass, tilting it and watching the now-matte blood change colors in the dim light. "And I have Sam Winchester's blood."

He could hear his father's grin and the pride in his voice. Finally. "That's my boy."

Tom hung up the call and finished his drink. He grabbed his coat, threw it on over the too-tight black t-shirt his vessel had chosen the day Tom had chosen him, and left the bar just behind the Winchesters, careful to keep his distance.

-o-o-o-

They got back to the motel close to eleven. The brothers were careful, expecting an ambush, but none presented. It was eerily quiet: entirely too still. The door to their room had been opened, the thin wire Dean placed between the door and the frame as he'd closed it that morning was now on the ground, but there was no demon inside. Either Azazel hadn't entered, or he'd used a human flunky to investigate the room.

Nothing was out of place, and if their wire trap hadn't shown that someone had, at the very least, opened the door, Dean would be lulled into a false sense of security by how damn untouched the room was. But he wasn't that naïve anymore.

They took the chip out of his phone, broke it in two and chucked the whole thing. Then the boys packed, loaded up the Impala, and left town. They'd call another hunter from the road to finish the case there.

As they drove away, they were careful to make sure they weren't being followed.

-o-o-o-

A rough thirty-two hours later, Chuck Shurely trudged tiredly to his front door way too early in the morning to answer a persistent knocking. He was expecting his mail lady, who always had a sharp, rapping knock, about as demanding and patient as the rest of her. He was not, however, expecting to open his front door to an equally severe looking woman whom he had never seen before in his life. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a business card in one hand.

"Good morning, Mr. Shurely, my name is Stephanie. Your publisher sent me."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns**_ _: Hehehe, I'm so excited about this, guys. Not only is so much stuff happening - stuff that has been planned for two friggin' years now - but this story needed more Chuck in it ;D_

 _ **Up Next**_ _: Chuck and 'Stephanie' have a chat, we finally get to learn our mystery lady's real name, and God is not a happy camper about it. Meanwhile, Sam and Dean pull one over on Tom, unaware he's ready to pull one right back, as they head for Guthrie, Oklahoma to investigate a couple of suspicious suicides._


	62. Season 2: Chapter 29

**_A/Ns_** _:_ _We're posting early! That's right, bitches, it's a holiday weekend, I had plenty of time to get this chapter edited, and I am too excited about it to wait until Sunday. Happy Easter Present to us!_

 _ **Reviews**_ _: your comments last chapter were AWESOME. Someone got awfully close to guessing what our mystery lady might be, for starters :D Btw, about that; I'm really happy you guys are taking stabs and guesses (and no stress if you aren't/don't have one). It helps me gauge how I'm doing with the hints and the like. Also, I should tell you that you're not actually *supposed* to be able to guess what she is. I am doing that on purpose, in case any of you are getting frustrated or thinking you all should be able to come up with this answer. It is definitely meant to be a dangled-on-a-string type of mystery. Second, someone straight up asked why the bitch hadn't been smote by an archangel yet, showing up on Chuck's door like that (okay, so, I'm paraphrasing, but that's totally the tone I heard in my head). To which I say, yessssssss. The answer to that incredibly legitimate and relevant question is in this chapter, it just so happens ;)_

 _ **Speaking Of**_ _: Welcome to the second of two-plot-twists-that-makes-this-author-incredibly-nervous! The first was Fem!Cas, but it's this one I spent more time debating. I knew I was turning Cas female as soon as I realized I couldn't keep Jimmy as a vessel; it just sucked knowing I'd lose some people to that choice. But this one I could have avoided and deliberately chose not to. See, I usually don't do OCs of any kind, good or evil. (Angela was actually an accident. I never planned for her to be a character, she just sort of…kept happening.) I think my dislike stems from so many being poorly written or unnecessary to the story, and I project my dislike of them onto all readers, convincing myself no one wants or likes to read OCs. Now, I know that's not actually true, and additionally, I am 90% positive I can write a good character who's properly integrated into a story, but… I don't know, the stigma just remained. It took months of debating before I decided, fuck it, I think I've got a cool character on my hands and I want to share that with you. Plus, you know, it's_ Supernatural _, so… I can always just kill off a female character unexpectedly and on absolutely no one's request!_

 _(Looking at you, there, Charlie. And Jo. And Ellen. Eileen. Kaia. God damn. Okay, forget my nervousness, this show needs more women who don't die on us, damnit!)_

 _((You stay *the hell* away from Jody Mills, Supernatural Writers, or I will *knife* you!))_

 _(((Disclaimer: All death threats made by the entity known as "the author" or while under the alias "Silence" or "no good dirty rotten" are entirely works of fiction, arguably intended as 'jokes' made by an unfortunate fangirl suffering delusions of comedic genius)))_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 29

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Tom swung his legs back and forth like an unattended child, reading off the information they'd gathered so far. "Carver Edlund's real name is Chuck Shurely. Here's his address and number, as well as the info we have on his Publisher. She's a waste of time though; you're going to have to weasel your way in on your own."

The woman looked up with a frown, even as she accepted several notecards the demon handed her. "This would be far easier if we put someone else in her place. Can one of you hell spawn not simply possess her?"

"Gee, thanks, Sherlock. We hadn't thought of that," Tom deadpanned before rolling his eyes. "Not only is Ms. Siege warded, her entire office is as well. Turns out-" he picked up one of the _Supernatural_ books and tossed it her way, voice dripping with derision- "she's a fan. A _paranoid_ fan. Sending in a human agent got us nowhere. Apparently Mr. _Edlund_ is 'very private,' so you're on your own."

She set the book aside and finished pulling on the blazer he had brought her that morning. Tom regarded her with something between skepticism and disdain. Heavily leaning more towards the latter.

"You can _lie_ , right?"

The look she leveled his way was an insulted one, and he showed off his pearly whites in response.

"To Chuck Shurely?" She grabbed the small silver charm off the motel dresser and slipped it around her neck. Black hair became blonde, green became blue, and suddenly standing in the room was a fairly professional looking, Caucasian woman. "Surely, I can."

The demon groaned. "Don't do that. Ever again."

She rolled her shoulder and fingered the charm around her neck, glancing at it in the mirror attached to the dresser. "Do you know which of the Archangels guards the prophet?"

Tom raised an eyebrow at her in the reflection. "Does it matter?"

"If it is Gabriel or Raphael, this warding may be enough. They were never particularly observant."

"And if it's Michael?"

She settled the necklace back against her skin. "My chances of getting through the day not smote by lightning significantly decrease."

Tom regarded her with a curious look on his face. "Could he do it?"

"Smite me? He's an archangel."

"Kill you."

The woman paused, meeting the demon's gaze in the mirror, the narrow slant of her eyes clearly wondering why he asked. The silence passed between them, heavy and challenging and unbroken, before she turned away from the mirror, the question going unanswered. She crossed back to the bed where she sat and reached down to put on the sneakers she had worn to the bar.

"Ah-ah-ah! Making you look presentable was a pain in the ass; you are not ruining my hard work." Tom jumped down from the kitchenette table, reaching beneath it for a shoebox that he tossed her way. The glare she threw right back once she opened the lid was nothing short of what he'd already prepared for. "You're wearing them."

She pulled out the pair of high heels. "I already told you, I can't walk in them."

"They're _pumps_. Anyone could walk in them," Tom argued back, having absolutely no clue why his father had wasted breath warning him not to underestimate her. Or why they needed her at all, actually. Up until and including this very moment, she had been nothing but a useless thorn in their sides.

As she violently threw the box onto the bed and started tearing the rolled up balls of paper out of the toes, Tom dug into his jacket pocket. "Last thing: ID and business cards. Sam already thinks your name is Stephanie, so we went with that. Can't exactly use your real one; it's a bit dated, even for the 'Apple' and 'Chandelier' freaks today."

The woman didn't understand half of what came out of his mouth but, then again, this demon did delight in reminding her that everything she knew came from a television set or the internet. She hobbled over to him, one foot already strapped into the 'pump',and ripped the small, plastic identification card out of his hand. It had a photo of her – or the version the warded necklace provided – and the surname the demon had chosen.

The one he'd said would be a perfect fit.

Once she read it, she immediately chucked the thing back at his forehead and hobbled off to put her other ridiculous shoe on.

-o-o-o-

When Chuck opened his front door that morning, clad in not much but a coffee-stained t-shirt, a robe, and a pair of boxers two days old, he was expecting his harried mailwoman with another batch of mis-delivered packages or letters lacking the correct stampage. He and his mail lady didn't get on very well. Their feud was one of suburban legend, to go down in the songs of fishwives everywhere. Or so Chuck let himself believe every time he had to face the tired, overpowering woman who reminded him more of a large toad preparing to swallow him whole than a human being with a sucky job and three difficult children at home.

He was not expecting to open the door to a woman that was most definitely not his mail lady, although she appeared to be equally unimpressed with him. She stood in a stiff suit and heels that brought her maybe to Chuck's nose, bun of crisp blonde hair on the top of her head as strict as the blue-eyed glare she leveled at him. She might have been stunning in a natural sort of way – completely out of his league, he admitted easily – if it wasn't for the blatant expression of distaste plastered on her face and the way she looked like she wanted to climb out of that blazer and blouse combo, possibly to set it on fire to the soundtrack of something Hans Zimmer would write.

Basically, there was not an inch of this woman that did not intimidate the hell out of the poor man whose stoop she chose to grace that morning.

But there was a moment – a single solitary second amid Chuck's initial surprise, then panic, followed by the flush of heat that slickened his palms and the edges of his hairline, wrapping up with potentially epileptic nervousness, before ending, damn near anti-climatically, with well-learned resignation – when Chuck Shurely was not Chuck Shurely anymore. For just that moment, something far older stood in the doorway and stared at the thing on his front step, introducing herself. This ancient being had a penetrating gaze older than time itself, and his face, which looked shockingly similar to Chuck Shurely's, was caught between genuine surprise and terrible anger.

Then the moment was gone, and it was just a human writer, lonely alcoholic, and despondent prophet once more standing in his open door, staring at the woman as he tried not to confuse his tongue with his brain and his brain with his tongue. The source of his tongue-tied brain saw none of this, busy digging into her black and silver embossed purse that seemed about as ill-fitting to her as the outfit. She pulled out a business card.

"Good morning, Mr. Shurely. My name is Stephanie." She held out the card with the brusque efficiency of someone serving a subpoena. Chuck swallowed heavily. He took the card after almost fumbling it twice. "I'm an editorial assistant, here to help you with your newest ' _Supernatural'_ novel. Your publisher sent me."

He stared at the paper in his hand, having not heard much past 'good morning,' since his focus was primary on untangling the jumbled communication line between his neurons and his lips. Chuck blinked at the embossed words running neatly across the card, and his mouth finally took over where his brain was failing him.

"Wait, you're serious?" He glanced back up at the woman with an incredulous look. "Your name is really Stephanie Meyer?"

The tight lip smile she sent him was anything but friendly. "I didn't pick it."

"Uh…" Chuck chuckled weakly, before realizing that she was not laughing along. "Yeah, that's…that's unfortunate. Especially in this industry."

"I'm aware. Someone out there thinks they're very funny."

"Um…" The writer blinked, feeling entirely left out of a joke that he was also pretty sure he didn't want in on. "Right…uh, well, come on in. My- my publisher sent you?"

He stepped to the side so she could enter his house, closing the front door behind her. Chuck gestured nervously for her to follow as he led the way into his living room. She only tripped once on her way, glaring down at her shoes in a manner that made Chuck infinitively grateful he was not them. Once in the room, he had to quickly toss several articles of dirty laundry off the couch, belatedly noticing the numerous half-drunk liquor bottles and takeout boxes scattered on just about every other surface in the room.

God, he really needed to get a life. Preferably a better, less embarrassing one.

Luckily for him, Ms. Meyer didn't seem to care. She set aside a dirty sock that he'd missed and settled herself onto the couch easily enough. "She didn't tell you? Hold on, I have her number here. We can give her a call."

The woman was back to digging through that awful purse and Chuck waved her off, not wanting to be a nuisance by not believing her. It's not like there was any other reason a beautiful woman would sit in his ramshackle house and put up with him at eight in the morning.

"Oh, no, that's okay. I know I'm a bit behind schedule." He looked around awkwardly for a second chair, but entertaining company wasn't exactly a common occurrence for him. "The, uh, the new book just isn't…er, writing itself like the others."

Clumsily, Chuck started to clear a space on the coffee table, scattering empty Red Bull cans and liquor bottles and hastily stacking dishes to the side until he had room enough to perch awkwardly on the edge. He tucked his hands in his lap, then beneath his thighs, then back in his lap, twiddled his thumbs together and hoped he wasn't making a complete fool of himself. He was fairly certain that, too, was a fool's hope.

"Well, that's what I'm here for." The woman attempted a smile, her tone not unkind, but somehow neither seemed right on her. "Keep you on track, read your rough drafts and provide feedback, motivation: whatever you need."

"Right, that, uh… that sounds… good." Chuck rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "So, um, you've read them, then?"

"The books?" The woman seemed thrown by the question. "Oh, I've read a couple. They're…good."

She barely got the word out without chocking on it and any semblance of patience God had left, hiding behind Chuck's nervousness, was gone. He rolled His eyes and Chuck was no longer Chuck.

"Okay, that's enough." God snapped His fingers and the woman went limp against the back of the couch. He scooted forward on the coffee table, His knees bumping hers, but His expression remained deadly serious. "What are you doing here?"

Her fingers curled slowly against the cushions and the woman blinked heavily. She was fighting it; He could feel her struggle not to answer. God sighed heavily, stood, and crossed the small space between them.

"You really are his child, aren't you?" He sat down beside her, one hand settling on her forearm, the other waving over her head and body. She went completely boneless against the couch, held upright only by his presence beside her. Blue eyes flickered green despite the spell cleverly wrapped in her necklace, both so blank they seemed nearly lifeless.

"Who raised you from the pit?"

Her mouth moved reflexively. "The demon Azazel."

"And how did he find you?"

"The demon Lilith."

God almost rolled His eyes, a bit of Chuck unintentionally bleeding through. "And how did _she_ find you?"

"I don't know."

He was hardly satisfied by that answer, but the current line of questioning sure didn't seem to be getting them anywhere. So God switched tactics. "Why are you here?"

Hell wasn't supposed to know of the existence of the Prophet yet, at least not as a writer. Certainly not as someone they were bold enough to approach, considering the archangel guarding him twenty-four-seven. The multiple break-ins over the past several months had not gone unnoticed by God, even if they had by Chuck. Lucky for both of them, Chuck had accidentally misfiled the first drafts of the story, still suffering from his first-ever brainstorming migraine. Hell's house invader – a clever human thief one of the crossroads demons likely had on a string – walked away with a USB full of an impressive, if not pitiable, porn collection labeled 'Supernatural Stories'.

The Winchester Gospels, meanwhile, sat pretty and safe in the untouched 'porn' folder on Chuck's desktop. Given Dean was one of the main characters, Chuck had found his initial misfiling amusing and hadn't bothered correcting it.

"Answer the question," God nudged her arm. "Why are you here?"

"To follow Sam Winchester."

Chuck's eyebrows went up, and for a moment He forgot to be God. He was genuinely surprised for a second time that morning, which simply didn't happen to all-knowing beings very often, you know. "Wait, _this_ is Hell's backup plan? Dean's changing things left and right, and _you_ are their answer?"

He laughed and looked away in amazement, before He really started to think over it. The woman didn't respond, either not having an answer or His spell giving her a pass since He wasn't actually expecting one. Chuck leaned back, putting His arm across the back of the couch. "Well, that could backfire spectacularly. For either party."

They sat in silence, the woman slumped beside Him while God stared off at nothing in particular, chewing on His lip (a pure Chuck thing that He'd accidentally picked up over the last thirty years or so). His eyes slid sideways to the plot twist currently sitting on his couch.

"I do kind of want to see that…"

But He didn't want the scales to tip from where they sat now, either. Despite Dean Winchester's misgivings, He _was_ doing what He could to help. God sat up and turned back towards Hell's little home wrecker, contemplating what to do. He could send her back to that hole Azazel dug her out of, add a couple extra layers of warding to make sure no one ever freed her again, and be done with it. Or He could wait it out, see how Time decided to deal with the new player on their board.

His gaze slid down to her hands, where her fingers started curling again. A futile but stubborn-headed fight against His will. Truly, she was her father's creation.

God knew what He probably _should_ do, but He hadn't yet decided what He was going to do. So He settled a hand over those twitching fingers, stilling the movement, and asked a question He did not anticipate liking the answer to.

"Tell me; what are _you_ going to do, _Persephone_?"

He could feel the struggle in her voice, the ache in every not-muscle she didn't actually possess. All just clever spell work and artistic talent. The woman – Persephone – turned her head, barely visible panic in those heavily glazed eyes that met His own.

"Who… _are_ ….you?"

-o-o-o-

"-and then I was thinking maybe not a witch, but a demon. Ultimately I decided, why not both! And I'll name her Ruby. Get it?"

Persephone blinked, taking a deep breath as if she hadn't in quite some time. She'd been… she'd been thinking… of what?

"Ms. Meyer?"

She blinked again and looked up to the face of Chuck Shurley, seated on the coffee table across from her, fidgeting nervously.

"Sorry, I'm probably boring you to death."

"No." Persephone sat up straighter, clearing her throat and hoping it cleared the cobwebs from her mind as well. She'd been thinking something, only moments ago… angry about something, maybe? She cleared her throat again and shook her head. "Not at all, Mr. Shurely. I assure you, it takes much more than boredom to kill me."

"Chuck."

"I'm sorry?"

The author cleared his own throat a little nervously. "You can call me Chuck."

"Steph," she conceded as well with a smile that was definitely the least intimidating thing she'd done so far. "Now, Chuck, what were you saying?"

"I was just…talking about Sam?"

"Oh." A smile lit her face again and the tension she hadn't even known was in the room bled out of it. She folded her hands in her lap. "Then please, continue."

Chuck smiled shyly back, and if there was something a little older in his eye – a little dangerous and a little mischievous – the woman didn't seem to notice.

-o-o-o-

The following morning when 'Stephanie' showed up at his door again (still way too early, even for a god), the blazer-blouse combo remained but she was wearing a far more comfortable-looking pair of jeans. The third time, her hair was down and there were sneakers on her feet. By the fourth, Chuck was starting to feel a lot less intimidated around the intimidating woman.

-o-o-o-

"Son of a bitch." Dean let out a low growl as he all but fell on his ass getting the tracker loose from Baby's under carriage. He glared at the small device, little green light blinking cheerfully from the small square of technology and just pissing himself off all the more. He tossed the thing up to his brother. "You were right."

Sam looked down at the small thing as he caught it, honestly surprised that it was nothing more than your average, human tracking device. He didn't know what he'd been expecting (something supernatural, or a maybe normal device adapted using something supernatural?) but it was mundane after all.

"Coming here was a good call," he said, offering Dean a hand up off the dusty ground. Bobby, standing next to them, had his arms crossed over his chest and an unhappy look on his face. The younger Winchester gave him a grateful look for the home base he seemed always willing to provide, however grumpily. "Demons already know how often we stop here. Good a place as any to 'lose' a tracking device."

Bobby just harrumphed, but it wasn't like he was unused to Winchesters bringing crap down on his house.

"I don't know, man," Dean countered, taking the blinking thing back from the younger Winchester, tossing it in his palm. "This is getting out of hand. Tracing our phones, breaking into the motel room, _tagging_ my _car_? They're getting too aggressive. I don't like it."

Bobby snorted, calling both brothers' attention. He uncrossed his arms. "What did you expect? It ain't like demons woke up one morning and thought, let's mess with the Winchesters today. This is the apocalypse we're talking about, ya idjits! That takes planning, years of it. And here you come along, a kink in the blueprints they probably ironed every wrinkle out of a century ago, and now they can't find you boys on top of it all? Of _course_ they're getting aggressive."

Dean bristled under the accusations, although he knew Bobby didn't mean a single one of them like that. "Well, what are we supposed to do about it? Let them find us? Find Sam? We _can't_ , Bobby. So how do we stop them? How do we fix this?"

The older hunter shrugged, eyes wide in that apologetic way they took on whenever his boys asked questions he didn't have the answers to. "I don't think you can. Other than-"

"-sticking to the damn timeline." Dean clenched his fist around the stupid tracker, tilting his head back to stare at the sky and curse out God one more time. It was practically a habit by now. "I know."

"So…" Sam glanced between the two of them. "A case, then?"

His brother sighed, dropping his head back down. "Yeah, a case." At least until they figured out what the hell to do about Hell. "Whatdya got?"

Bobby shrugged one shoulder. "There's been a couple suicides in Guthrie. Weird-ass stuff. Was in the paper this morning."

"Guthrie it is," Dean said with about as much enthusiasm as a heart attack. He dropped the small tracker into the dust, lifting his boot to crush it when Sam took an aborted step forward, arm raised hastily to stop his brother.

"Wait," he said and Dean did. "I have a better idea."

-o-o-o-

Sam darted between trucks, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible (which meant it was really more a stroll among the trucks but, whatever). The boys had stopped at the first gas station outside of Souix Falls that was large enough to fit their needs. Namely, filled with truckers on the long haul across country.

The young Winchester pulled up short, stepping out of the way of a passing trucker. He nodded to the man, going for his innocent-civilian-out-for-a-stroll-in-the-parking-lot smile. The man gave him a weird look, but dipped his ball-capped head in return before disappearing into the general store attached to the pumps.

Sam pushed on until he spotted an eighteen wheeler with North Carolina plates and a logo for _'Transcontinental Shipments_ ' printed on the side. Perfect. It was probably headed for the coast, and still had a ways to go yet. With any luck, the driver was on his way out for delivery, which meant he would not only continue on for another half of the country, but turn around and drive back, as well.

Casting a furtive look around the truck stop, Sam leaned over and slapped the tracker on the inside of the cab's front wheel well. The little green light blinked away in the dark arch, unnoticeable once he straightened back up. Task complete, the hunter glanced around again, making sure he hadn't been noticed, before hustling it back to where the Impala was parked.

-o-o-o-

"Alright, tell me about this hunt we're walking into," Dean said from the driver's seat, hand digging around in a bag of Doritos placed between the two. No reason not to pick up some road-tripping supplies when stopping to plant a tracker on some poor, unsuspecting trucker. They were on their way to Guthrie now, hopefully without a demonic tail, where a line-up of apparent suicides had the local newspapers speculating the crap out of conspiracy theories.

"There've been three deaths so far, two of them suicides, one homicide. Bobby was right, though, they are weird." Sam shuffled papers in the passenger seat, having forgone his laptop since they would be on the road for a while and even his hackery wasn't up to task for creating magical wi-fi signals out of thin air. "The first was a Dr. Jennings. Walked into a gun shop, shot the owner with a turkey rifle and then turned it himself."

"A real life Private Pyle. Great."

"Yeah, well, this wasn't some tormented war vet," Sam countered. "The doc has no priors, no history of violence or suicidal tendencies, and the town seems genuinely rattled. By all accounts, he was a 'nice guy.'"

"Yeah, a 'nice guy' who walked into a gun shop and shot up the customers. Next."

Sam spared his brother a reproachful look, but continued on regardless. "Holly Beckett, also ruled a suicide. The second one in a ten block radius, which is probably what made the local newspaper decide it was a story. No criminal record, no known symptoms of depression, same as the doctor. She was single, forty-one, and two days ago pulled up to a gas station and… _set_ herself on fire."

Dean's eyebrows rose and he glanced Sam's way in surprise. The younger brother's first thought was, _'yeah, Bobby warned us they were weird_ ,' but as that same brow plummeted into a frown Sam recognized, he paused, brain stuttering for a second.

"Wait, does that- is this a case we worked?"

The frown deepened, and Dean rubbed at his chest absently. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Sam didn't see how a woman covering herself in gasoline and using the cigarette lighter from her own car as an incendiary could possibly come with any _maybes._ When Dean's frown persisted but no explanation was forthcoming, Sam hesitated, and then asked, "…Timey Senses acting up?"

Dean actually laughed and dropped his arm from his chest, never having noticed he was rubbing at it in the first place. "Ha! I knew I'd get you to call it that. Admit it. It's a cool name."

"It is absolutely not a cool name." Sam shook his head, but leveled his brother with a more solemn follow-up look. "Seriously, man, what's going on?"

The frown came back, but Dean at least answered this time. "I, uh… it sounds familiar. Real familiar. As in, I remember being at the gas station."

Sam pursed his lips, but didn't find that particularly troubling. At least, not their normal level of troubling. He looked down at the picture of Holly Beckett staring up at him and caught a glimpse of the passing interstate signage out of his periphery. They wouldn't get into Guthrie until the early hours of the morning, but they weren't that far out, either. "Uh, well, we're on our way, and it's only a couple hours out-"

"No, I mean, I was there right after she went up; whole place still smelled like burnt flesh." Dean wrinkled his nose, wringing one hand on the steering wheel. "That article's from yesterday, which means last time we were there already. I mean, maybe it was a different case and I'm just confusing the two, but…"

He couldn't actually recall the events surrounding him being at the gas station. He remembered phoning Sam, though, and asking why the hell his vision hadn't given them more heads up. Sammy hadn't had a vision about any of this, though. They were just following some newspaper leads, this time around.

"But," Sam picked up where he'd left off, "how many people set themselves on fire at a gas station."

"Exactly." Dean rubbed at his chest again, the familiar tightness stretching across his pecs a fairly common occurrence these days. Usually when a demon was about or things weren't going their way. And there certainly wasn't a demon anywhere near them right now. "I don't know, man. If I was there first time around, then our timing's off. And that's never a good thing."

It didn't take a genius, or a psychic, or even a man from the future, to know where both their minds immediately went. Straight to Max Miller and the mess they'd gotten into – and everything it had cost them – right after they showed up on a hunt where things hadn't been lining up.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns**_ _: So. Friggin'. Excited! Like, excited enough I'm having trouble waiting a full week to post chapters :D From here on out, no one in this little tale is getting a break anytime soon. Our poor Season 2.1 has to make up in action and plot-forwarding what 2.0 had in chatter and development. So. Friggin'. Excited._

 ** _Stephanie Meyer:_** _I honestly couldn't help myself. Her name was always going to be 'Stephanie' because what else would you hear if you misheard "Persephone" said in a crowded bar? And her going to Chuck as someone in the publishing industry? Ha! Yeah, her last name was a given from the start. Tom's an asshole XD_

 _ **God before Chuck:**_ _So, the scarily observant of you might be wondering "why did she bother capitalizing all of those He's and His's when she didn't do that for the conversation between Dean and God?" Okay, honestly if you actually picked up on that, you're really freaky and I'm definitely looking at you funny, but also I appreciate you :D Anyhoo, head-cannon here is that God can slip back into his Old Testament self/habits. And when He's back to being that Old Testament dick, before He took a sabbatical and learned to play the guitar, He gets capitalized pronouns :P_

 _ **Persephone**_ _: Bring on the slew of "huh, wasn't really expecting that" peppered among the "…who?" and some spattering of "Uh, wait a sec, Silence, that's not- I mean it doesn't quite…well, *some* liberties, I suppose, but still mostly…no?" Of which, to all, I reply: "hehehe };-] " Would I be a no good dirty rotten author any other way? I think not._

 _ **Fun Fact #82**_ _: The human thief Hell sent in to Chuck's Publisher's office and into his house to steal his files? Totally Bella._

 _ **Up Next**_ _: As you might have guessed right along with the boys, things are not going down as they should in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Baby's getting driven off the road, Weber's an insane asshole (okay, no change there), Andy's in some major trouble, Dean's remembering just why they call him a Jedi but lamenting the fact he's a piss-poor communicator, Sam's all sorts of confused and freaked out (okay, so no real change to any of these things, actually...), and Yellow Eyes is all up in a different pair of brothers, for once._


	63. Season 2: Chapter 30

_**A/Ns:** I just want you to know how much I love you guys. What did I want to do after seeing Endgame today? Nothing but read Avengers fanfiction aaaaaaall night long. What did I do instead? Edited this chapter because you all deserve a weekend that not only starts with Endgame but also comes with a chapter update. That's real love right there (and humility and modesty too, if you didn't pick up on that ;) _

**_Reviews:_** _I think even if you all hadn't offered up some of the damn best, most amazing, heart-warming, chest-feather-puffing comments I've ever received, I'd still love you all enough to forfeit Avengers fanfiction for a night. But, just so you all know, that like button might be broke form how hard you all pushed it. I'm running out of chest-feathers, I preened so hard (...why did that sound dirty?)_

 _Jokes aside, t_ _hank you, guys._ _I really, really appreciate the love :)_

 _ **Original Timeline Reference** : In general, I don't spend a lot of time in this story describing how episodes went originally, but this particular chapter/episode is more barren of first-time clues than usual. You'll get a bare bones synopsis of the original episode (2.05 Simon Said) somewhere in this chapter, but that's pretty much it. Can you still read/understand/enjoy without more in-depth memory/knowledge? I think so (although I'm not exactly a_ _n objective source, here…) Still, it's not a bad idea to refresh your memory for the full effect (reading a synopsis online should be enough if you don't have time for or access to an episode re-watch)_

 _If you're too lazy to do that (no judgement, I feel you, you are my people) or I've turned you into too much of a junkie to even for a second postpone your weekly intake of time travel hijinks… just remember that Andy Gallagher can control people with his voice and he tends to ask them to give him things, like half-drank coffees and Impalas._

 _ **Chapter Warnings:** Andy's asking for things. Like half-drank coffees and Impalas. He's also not where he's supposed to be, but, then again, who has been lately?_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 30

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

It was well past dark when they got to Guthrie, Oklahoma. They were still in the outskirts, cruising with the windows down in the warm summer night air, the town just starting to populate the black around them with scattered porch lights and yellow-lit windows. Guthrie had a decent sized population, at least in relation to many of the towns hunters passed through, but the road was empty and the night quiet. The oncoming headlights were the first Dean had seen in a while.

They were also swerving.

"What the hell-" Dean's grumble turned into a shout of surprise as the oncoming car didn't stay in its oncoming lane. He cursed, yanking Baby to the right, barely missing the swerving vehicle as it flew past. It was a van, and Dean's eyes went wide as a Viking queen – sword in hand, mounted on a polar bear – flashed past.

Son of a bitch.

"I know that van!" he exclaimed, more out of surprise than on purpose. Dean slammed on the breaks and his brother lurched in the passenger seat, grabbing onto the dash.

From behind came a loud crunch of metal and a heavy thud. Dean flipped half in his seat to look out the back window, Sammy doing the same. The van had swerved off the side of the road, likely an overcorrection from nearly crashing into them. There was a minor drainage ditch between the road and the tree line, where the van had come to an unfortunate stop. Steam was rising from the bent hood, the entire front of the car crunched in around the trunk of a tree.

Dean threw Baby into reverse, spinning the wheel until he'd cleared enough room to pull a u-urn. They crept up on the van, slowly because Dean sure didn't remember this ever happening. While his brain was telling him the owner of that van was a friendly, that sure as hell didn't mean the current driver was. Sam kept glancing between the vehicle, so far silent in the night, and his brother.

The van door creaked open loudly, bent as it was on its hinges, and swung closed a time and a half before the driver got it all the way open. It was a kid – an unassuming man maybe Sam's age – in a robe and jeans and a t-shirt, short brown hair a complete mess. He looked like he ought to be stumbling out of bed, not an auto crash (which might actually explain the crash in the first place). The man staggered out onto the road, clearly dazed, a line of blood running down the side of his face.

"Yeah, yeah!" Dean exclaimed suddenly with a smile that seemed completely inappropriate given the circumstances. Sam's eyebrows went up as his brother brought the car to a stop a half dozen feet from the crashed van. The driver spotted them, and Dean turned to his brother even as the kid lurched their way. "It's the Star Wars guy!"

Sam just stared at his brother incredulously.

"It's the- you know-" Dean waved two fingers in the air, "'-these are not the droids you're looking for' guy! Crap, what was his name?"

Sam's bitchface (a variant of #1: _'You're not making any sense, Dean'_ ) didn't let up, clearly failing to decipher what the hell his brother was trying to say. Dean's hand was already on the door to get out and help – Sammy a little more cautious about the whole situation – when the man from the future suddenly remembered just _why_ it was they called this kid the Star Wars guy.

Oh no.

 _Baby_!

Dean turned to his brother, suddenly wide-eyed and Sam straightened, forehead smoothing out at the one-eighty in his brother's eyes. Not to mention the desperate tone as he suddenly pleaded, "Don't let him take the Impala."

Sam blinked and went immediately into alert mode, the man approaching now a threat and not a friend. But he didn't have time to get out more than a confused, "What?" before Andy was on them. The kid hit the driver side of the vehicle, fingers curling around the window frame.

"Get out."

"Okay." Dean smiled, nodded, and then was getting out of the car.

"What the hell- Dean!" Sam scrambled for his brother, but Dean was already out, holding the door open for the bleeding kid to clamber inside. Dean shut the door for him, still smiling a tight, goofy grin.

"You too," the kid aimed at Sam, barely even paying attention to him and Sam thought _'who the hell does this guy think he is'_ as he drew his gun.

"Yeah, I don't think so."

That was finally enough to grab Andy's attention, and he all but threw himself against the driver side door at the sight of the gun. His arms flailed, hands raised in a meager and futile shield. Blood dripped into his too-wide eyes from that cut on his forehead.

"What the hell! I said get out of the car!" His gaze bounced between the gun to the man behind it, clear panic on his face. "Drop the gun! Why aren't you putting it down?!"

Sam's arm didn't move an inch and his expression remained deadly. He glanced at Dean, who was busy babbling to the kid to calm down, it's fine, they're the good guys.

"Yeah," Sam said past a tight jaw to the kid still pressed against the door, clearly expecting him to obey vocal commands alone. The hunter didn't need much more than that and the Star Wars reference to clue in to what this man could do. "I don't seem to be listening. Now who the hell are you?"

"Me?" Andy flinched back, glancing frantically between the two brothers. "Who the hell are you guys?"

"We're hunters," Dean answered and Sam stared up at him. "We kill monsters – bad ones – and we're going to start and stop the apocalypse-"

"Dean!" Sam's bark did nothing for his brother, who still had that tight smile stretched across his face, nodding his head like he understood. " _Stop_."

"I'm trying," Dean answered through teeth clenched in that placating grin.

Andy was staring at him too, wide-eyed, and that was when he spotted Dean's gun, tucked in his jeans. Dean caught his gaze and glanced down right at the same time as he realized where this was going.

"Wait, kid, you don't want to-"

"Draw your gun and shoot yourself if he shoots me."

Sam cried out as Dean immediately drew his gun and put it to his head, hammer drawn back. The younger Winchester jerked forward viciously, the barrel of his own gun less than a foot away from the kid, who had nowhere else to scramble to. The gun shook in Sam's death grip and he wanted to shoot the man so much more now.

"Sam, don't," Dean immediately snapped, and that was pretty ridiculous, with him standing there, gun to his head. "Come on, man, don't do this. You were cool the first time we met."

"I've never met you!" Andy sounded hysteric. "Now stop lying! Who are you?"

"I'm Dean Winchester. I'm from the future."

"Dean, _shut up_."

"I said tell the truth!"

"I can't, Sammy, and I am, kid. I'm from the future. 'Bout ten years. Well, nine now. An angel sent me back to save the world."

Andy just stared at him, and Sam wondered if his powers would last past his death. He couldn't risk if they did, couldn't risk Dean shooting himself.

"It's the truth," he spat out instead, drawing the kid's attention back into the car. "Now get that gun away from my brother."

"You first!"

"Come on, guys," Dean practically whined, both smile and gun still in place. "We've gotten off on the wrong foot, here. Look, I'm Dean, this is my brother, Sam. We're here to help."

Andy faltered, glancing back up at the older Winchester as something he said finally seemed to get through. He glanced back at the man holding the gun on him. "Sam… Winchester?"

The brothers exchanged looks.

"Yeah."

Andy hesitated another moment, then obviously made some sort of decision. "Put the gun down, Sam."

Sam gave him a look that clearly said, _'Do I look stupid to you?_ ' but Andy merely returned it.

"It's okay, Sammy. Put the gun away."

The younger Winchester turned the same damn look on his brother, but eventually squared his jaw and lowered the weapon, very clearly re-engaging the safety. When the gun was set pointedly on the seat between them, closer to Andy than it was to Sam, the kid hesitated for only another half second before he angled his head over his shoulder to look at Dean.

"Put yours away, too."

"Safety on," Sam growled, but Dean didn't need the additional command. He re-engaged it all on his own, tucking the gun back into his waistline.

"Now, um…" Andy swallowed nervously, looking between the brothers. When he spoke, his voice sounded ever so slightly different, missing a timber that had been there previously. "Who are you two and _what_ is going on?"

-o-o-o-

They left Andy's van behind; the thing was totaled and it wasn't like they had time to call a tow. Andy was covered in blood and, it turned out, it wasn't all his.

"He killed her," he whispered from the back seat of the Impala, most of the story already out but this part clearly the hardest for him yet.

"Your brother?" Dean was in the front seat, driving them into town, but not to the county Andy had lived, where the suicides had been. Where a man named Ansem Weebs had changed his name, gotten a job in a coffee shop, befriended the manager, Tracy, and the local customer, Andy, and eventually used his new life to kill a doctor who delivered a set of twins twenty-three years ago, murder their biological mother, and finish it up with the girlfriend who stood in the way.

"I didn't know I had a brother," Andy mumbled, staring numbly at his hands in his lap. He huffed. "An evil twin. What do ya know? He didn't even have a goatee."

Sam glanced over at his own brother, but Dean could only offer a helpless shrug. They'd gotten there in time to save Andy's girl last time, though it still hadn't exactly been a happy ending.

"I killed him."

Both brothers looked at the kid in the backseat as the quiet confession turned to silence.

"He said a yellow-eyed man was going to reward him. Reward _us._ All we had to do was take out everyone else." Andy blinked tears from his eyes, wiping at them with bloody hands that didn't do much but make more mess. "He was- he was crazy. Said we could do it together. Be- be _kings_." He laughed, the sound hysterical and not remotely funny. "Some yellow-eyed freak came to my evil twin in a dream and convinced him to go on a murder spree."

Neither brother knew what to say to that. To that nightmare that sounded to made up even for television. And Andy was trapped in it, stuck living it.

"The man to get, he said-" The kid stopped, swallowing as he clenched his hands in his lap. He finally looked up, meeting their eyes, Sam's directly and then Dean's through the rearview mirror. "The man to get was Sam Winchester."

The Winchesters exchanged wide-eyed looks. Well shit. That's definitely not what had happened last time.

"He killed her," Andy whispered again, head back down. He was clearly in shock. "He killed her and I couldn't- I couldn't save- Oh god, she's dead. She's dead and I killed him."

Dean pulled into the first motel they came to, making sure to park in the back where there were less guests and even less working lights. Sam got them a room and they got the bloodied kid into the motel under the cover of darkness.

"I'll get him cleaned up," Dean said, putting the keys into his brother's hand. "Why don't you go check out the crime scene."

Sam nodded, hearing the unspoken words. He was going in to town to see if there was any way to salvage this for Andy, to let him keep his life as though he hadn't witnessed a homicide, committed one himself, and then ran. So the younger Winchester climbed back into the Impala and headed to the coffee shop where the kid said it had all gone down.

-o-o-o-

Andy came out of the shower with skin an irritated red from the heat, but he still felt numb. Everything tingled, but not the pleasant way. He sat on the bed in a pair of sweatpants that weren't his and were way too big for him, a band t-shirt he didn't know, and his maroon robe, still damp from his attempts to wash the blood out. He didn't know why, but getting it out, keeping one thing that was his from a life he knew was over, mattered. His hair was wet, dripping down his neck, and his forehead hurt, but Dean had assured him he didn't need stitches or a hospital. Just a few butterfly bandages, a couple Advil, and a fifth of rot-gut whiskey he downed greedily.

"What am I going to do?" He stared at the paper cup in his hands. He didn't feel the heat of the alcohol yet – had never been much of a drinker, really – and wondered if he should take more. "Tracy is- and I- I _killed_ someone."

"Come with us."

Andy's head snapped up to the man – the _hunter_ – leaning against the dresser-turned-tv-stand across from him. He looked serious.

"Look, you're a good kid and this is a…a shitty set of circumstances. We'll help. You're already running; we can teach you how to stay off the radar. Get you set up someplace new, if you want it." Dean uncrossed his arms and shrugged one shoulder. "Or, you can stick with us. We're planning on putting a bullet between those yellow eyes. You're more than welcome to be a part of that."

"I'm not a killer."

Only, god, yes he _was_.

"Nah, and you don't need to be," Dean agreed, a little smirk in the corner of his mouth that had Andy thinking, huh…maybe this guy was telling the truth. Maybe this guy really did know him, because with the ease that Dean agreed with his protest, Andy almost believed it himself. "But you are in danger, and me and my brother? We can help."

He looked down at the cup in his hands and didn't respond. Andy didn't have an answer, so he didn't bother trying to give one. Dean didn't ask, instead he just pushed off the dresser, grabbed the liquor bottle, and refilled his empty cup.

-o-o-o-

Sam was back before sunup. It was no good. The cops were already looking for Andy, and the evidence was stacked pretty strong against him. Two dead – at least one a homicide – with Andy's blood at the scene, a witness who placed him there, and both him and his easily-recognized van now missing? Even if he turned himself in immediately and claimed self-defense, the DA would use his running as a sign of guilt. It might not be an open-and-shut case, but it would be a hell of a battle, with no guarantee that Andy would walk away a free man.

Neither brother really factored in that he could talk his way out of anything, but Andy didn't much feel like talking about that. He was pretty sure if he turned himself in, the first words out of his mouth would be that he did it. He'd murdered someone – his own _brother_ – and he'd gotten his girlfriend – not his girlfriend, not anymore, not ever again – killed.

"It's okay," he said, still a little numb, but the alcohol was starting to warm his bones, if only just a little. "I was already running."

And he had been. His life was over, and he'd known it. He'd had no clue where he was going, only that he couldn't stay. Tracy was dead and- and there wasn't anything left for him in that town anyway. Before, he hadn't thought he'd needed much. But it turned out, he'd needed Tracy. He wished he'd figured that out sooner.

"I'll go with you," he added, looking up at the brothers. He didn't know them, but they seemed like good people, and they were offering him something he couldn't figure out for himself yet. "If that's still okay."

"Sure thing," Dean supplied, and if Sam was surprised by it, he hid it well behind sympathetic brown eyes. Maybe the two had already talked about it. Andy hadn't exactly been 'present' for the past several hours.

"I don't- I don't know what I'm doing." He didn't know if he said it because it was the truth, or as some sort of warning to the two that they were taking in a stray. An honest-to-god, lost and homeless stray. Andy had always been a bit of a wanderer. Bum, was usually the word people used, but it had never bothered him. It had been mostly true, after all, and he'd been happy with it.

Sam smiled, and Andy got the feeling the man knew exactly why he'd said it. "We'll figure it out."

"Until then, you're with us. It'll be awesome having a Jedi on the team." Dean grinned, but Sam must have caught Andy's hesitation and worry.

"You don't have to hunt," he added quickly, and the kid relaxed a fraction.

"'Course not," Dean agreed, though there was something in his voice that suggested he thought otherwise, even if he didn't say anything aloud. "You can just get us out of speeding tickets and we'll call it even."

Sam was shaking his head again and Dean winked over in Andy's direction. Even though there really was nothing remotely happy about it, Andy found himself smiling weakly back. Dean grabbed his jacket and duffle, tossing them onto the thin carpet. He grunted as he laid down.

"Next time, though, we're getting two rooms."

Sam shared a look with Andy that made him feel, ironically, like a brother. As the younger Winchester settled onto the other bed, Andy thought about offering the one he was sitting on. But Dean was already rolling onto his side, complaining to Sam to turn out the lights, and telling Andy to get some shut eye.

So he did. He didn't get any sleep, not with Tracy's tear-stained, shocked face replaying through his mind on a never ending loop, but he did close his eyes and at least pretend.

-o-o-o-

"So you get death premonitions?" Andy leaned over the front seat of the Impala, elbows brushing either brother as he hunched forward from the back seat. He was looking at Sam primarily, but kept switching between the two, especially as the conversation turned more and more incredulous. "That's impossible."

Beside him, Dean snorted. "Says the Star Wars guy."

Andy shrugged, cuz, hey, fair point, and added, "Dude, that sucks."

Sam gave him a look that Dean had called (earlier that morning) the patented 'Bitchface.' Dean, apparently, had a whole list of them, labeled and everything. Andy wished he could un-dead Weber just to tell him _'this is what being brothers is about, you asshole!'_

"I mean, like, when I got my mind thing? It was a gift. You know, it was like- it was like I won the lotto!" Andy, halfway through a chuckle, suddenly trailed off and the car got quiet. Yeah, it had been a gift. A gift that led right into a nightmare. He slid off the front seat and slumped in the back. "Guess what they say about winning the lotto is true."

"What's that?" Dean asked, though it was clear he couldn't decide if staying quiet would have been better.

They'd left early that morning, having Andy keep low in the back seat of the Impala as they headed out of town the opposite way they'd come in. They didn't run into any trouble, and Andy honestly didn't know what he'd been expecting. Road blocks maybe. Search dogs.

But it wasn't like he was on the FBI most wanted. Just a small town murderer. That was him, now.

He stared out the window, farther from home then he'd ever been before, and unlikely to ever go back. "You know. Be careful what you wish for, and all that."

The brothers exchanged looks, unsure how exactly to help someone grieving the loss of a loved one at the hands of their own flesh and blood. Crazy flesh and blood, maybe, but still kin. Kin that they'd then turned around and murdered. Dean gave Sam a pointed look – he was the one with all the feelings, after all – which Sam returned with a bitchface (#3 but it morphed into #9 midway).

Before the more feely of the two Winchesters could say anything, however, Andy cleared his throat and moved on. "Hey, you didn't get one of your visions about…?"

"No," Sam answered quickly, so the kid wouldn't have to finish that sentence. "We heard about the suicides on the news and came looking for a case."

"Because you hunt monsters." Andy still didn't sound like he believed them. But, then again, he could control people with his voice, he had an evil twin, and Sam saw dead people. So, really, what did Andy know?

Sam was staring at Dean, who hadn't had a comeback right away, and Andy realized the older Winchester was frowning. Sam nudged him.

"Nothing." Dean shook his head but Sam could tell he wanted to rub at his chest. Though, he was starting to think anytime Dean managed to refrain, the urge was more out of habit than necessity. "Just, last time we did this, you had visions."

"I did?"

Andy frowned, pushing himself into the front space once more, elbows over the back of the seat. "Wait, last time? Is this- hang on, you were _serious_? I thought you were _joking_!"

Dean ignored their tag-along for the moment, and wondered aloud if the coin Cas gave Sam was blocking his visions as well. Sam frowned.

"I haven't had any while I'm awake, either," he reasoned, but looked less than confident. It wasn't exactly scientific theory they were working with, here. Dean hadn't been able to confirm whether Azazel was directly responsible for every vision or not, at least not with any future knowledge, and the brothers could only speculate at best since the incident with Max Miller. "Not since I got off the demon blood."

"Whoa, _demon blood_?!"

"Don't worry," Dean said over Andy's growing concern (probably starting to panic about what exactly he'd signed himself up for), "you don't need them."

Sam seemed less confident – especially considering his visions were arguably integral to the timeline and they were supposed to be sticking to that – but they were interrupted by the kid, who had pushed himself so far into the front seat that he was going to cause an accident soon if they didn't start listening to him.

"Guys, can we slow down and rewind for a sec?"

"Get back and buckle up, you idiot," Dean snipped, but Andy did not such thing, just staring at him with wide eyes and no lack of disbelief.

"You were kidding back there, right? Yesterday? When I probably had a concussion and was bleeding all over the place and that's why you were able to lie? Because- because you're not _really_ from the future. That would be- heh- that would be _insane_." When neither brother said anything more, Sam looking a little guilty and Dean keeping an unnecessary level of focus on the road, Andy added a little hysterically and definitely loud enough to make Dean wince, "You're from the future?!"

-o-o-o-

Andy sat, kind of like a statue, in the back seat, staring through the windshield. He'd been that way for the last five minutes, and it was honestly starting to get a little worrying.

"The apocalypse," he finally spoke, though it didn't come with much movement. " _The_ apocalypse. Holy crap."

Dean huffed something out that wasn't pretty, but thankfully it wasn't really audible either. Sam turned to tuck his elbow over the back of the seat and tried to offer a reassuring look. It wasn't all that reassuring.

"I know it's a lot," Sam offered, going for gentle and Andy's eyes slid over to him, looking no less freaked out than a second ago. "And I'd say you don't have to be a part of it, but-"

"But you are," Dean cut in, ignoring the sharp way Sam looked at him for it. No use playing soft ball with the kid. "And it sucks, but we'll get you through it." As if realizing what he'd said – which wasn't technically untrue if you counted intent being stronger than all that destiny crap, but still – Dean locked eyes with the kid in the rear view mirror and added, "We're gonna stop it this time."

Andy chewed on the inside of his cheek. It wasn't that he didn't believe Dean (okay, he didn't exactly believe Dean…) but this was the freakin' end of the world they were talking about here! "I… I don't know if I'm- If I can…handle that, guys. I'm just- I'm just a _normal_ guy, okay? With- with mind control powers, I'll give you that, but I didn't sign up for any of this!"

Sam's smile, while weak, was understanding, because of course it was. He was an understanding guy who sounded even deeper up shit creek than Andy was. At least _he_ had awesome mind powers. Sam just saw people die all the time and was apparently doomed to escort _Lucifer_ to the end of the world.

"We know, Andy, and you don't have to be up for it, alright?" He turned back around, leaning against his own seat. "You want out, tell us. It's true that you're a part of this, and you may not be able to avoid it but…" Sam glanced at Dean, a silent conversation Andy had no hope of interpreting. "It doesn't mean you have to go running head first into it, either."

The kid from Guthrie, Oklahoma just swallowed heavily in the back seat, completely lost as to how his life had spiraled so out of control so quickly. He was in a world of pain he knew nothing about. But, there were two people currently with him who at least knew the rules of that brave new world, and were promising to teach him. If he wanted it.

"Yeah," he breathed out, leaning back against the seat and tipping his head up to stare at the beige ceiling. He didn't have a better option right now, and Andy had always been more of a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. He turned his head and watched the world pass by the window. "Yeah, alright."

-o-o-o-

That night they stopped at another hotel. Dean got his two rooms, as requested, and rock-paper-scissored with his brother for the single. He lost. The older man was still grumbling when Andy asked if he got to play the winner, then. Both brothers just stared at him, before glancing at each other and sort of shrugging out a 'that's fair.'

He kicked Sam's ass, and got a room all to himself. Go him.

Despite his best attempts not to, it wasn't all that long before Andy was asleep on his single queen mattress in a rundown motel that hadn't seen renovation since it was built in the sixties. He hadn't meant to sleep, desperately wanted not to, and had been avoiding it for well beyond his limit, now. Honestly, he hadn't thought sleep would even come, not without a little help from Mary Jane. He hadn't slept without her assistance since he was a tweener. As it turned out, though, a near forty-eight hours of no sleep on top emotional trauma the likes he'd never experienced before was, apparently, where his body drew the line, with or without MJ.

The silence of the motel, mostly empty except for the occasional thump or shuffle of the brothers next door or a guy two doors down who sounded like he'd snuck a stray cat into the room with him, lacked the necessary distraction to stay awake. Soon enough, Andy was pulled into a desperately needed, albeit terribly unwanted, sleep.

And with sleep came the dreams he feared.

"Well, well, well," a man with yellow eyes was clapping as he emerged from the shadows of Tracy's kitchen. He seemed heedless of the growing puddle of blood beneath his feet. "Looks like I put my money on the wrong brother."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns**_ _: I loved Andy. I always wanted more of him in the show (so…uh…look guys, I fixed it!)_

 _ **Update on Cas:**_ _For those of you missing Cas (I'm seeing an increasing number of reviews about the lack of him/her…) hang in there. He's gonna keep popping back up. We haven't even gotten to what Uriel is up to in Heaven, which is also coming this season. I promise, as 2.1 comes to a massive head, you'll get plenty of your favorite angel (whump. I mean, *cough* what? I didn't say anything, you're hearing – er…reading? – things.)_

 _ **Up Next:** Andy relives the worst night of his life to an audience of one (yellow-eyed demon), in which evil twins are evil (facial hair or no facial hair). Meanwhile, the Winchesters learn that it's not just hunters who wake up swinging, and Andy is strongly reconsidering that that whole atheism thing when the boys get an impromptu visitor._


	64. Season 2: Chapter 31

_**A/Ns**_ _: Figured we could post a *little* early again this week (it was supposed to be earlier but I got distracted watching the first Avengers). I've been relegated to standing around my house for the second weekend in a row with nothing to do but write standing up while I stare longingly at the couch, or any chair in general, really. Back issues are so stuuuupid._

 _(It's actually my piriformis, which is beneath your glute, so, literally, what a pain in the ass. Talk about being the butt of my own joke._ _God, tight asses, am I right? Okay, I swear, that's the last dad pun, and this was probably waaay too much information for you all XD)_

 _Extra long chapter this time (to make up for the dad jokes) I know the last, like, ten chapters have been on the shorter side of out normal range, so an extra long one to finally balance it out :P_

 _ **Chapter Warnings**_ _: Andy's getting his dream power on and oh boy is he wishing he wasn't, evil twins are *evil*, angels and demons are popping by for chats, and oh, yeah, Andy watches way too much trashy tv (and maybe ships it?)_

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 31

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Tracy called him on the phone that night. Andy didn't own a cell – he always just asked one off of someone when he needed to – but it wasn't all that hard to get a hold of him. Just call the pizza joint he parked his van outside of most nights (they had the best pie in town, man, and were always willing to give him dinner on the house anytime he asked). Mike was one of the delivery guys and just so happened to also be Andy's primary supplier of the good stuff (he actually had four different guys around town he went to for pot; even the lowest-key of dealers got kinda squirmy pretty quickly if they thought you were scamming them, mind powers or not. So Andy had taken to alternating). Mike knocked on the side of the van around nine, one medium pan-crust peperoni, banana peppers, and pineapple smelling like Heaven in his hands. Andy's favorite. Mike handed over the pie, a couple grams, and the message that Tracy was looking for him.

Man, did Andy live the good life, or what?

He got to Tracy's shop a little after eleven. She didn't call him much anymore, not since he'd pretty much put the grand canyon of emotional distance between them. He hadn't _meant_ to, not really. He just…didn't want to end up controlling her, not even by accident. And it would be accidental, of course; Andy would never use his power on Tracy any other way. But, he hadn't always had the best control, especially early on when they'd first started and he spent several months just _freaking out_. Even once he'd mastered them, Andy knew better than to think control was anything more than a matter of will, and he'd never exactly been good at the self-discipline category.

He didn't want to hurt her, and Andy sort of knew that, eventually, if he stuck around, he would.

"Trace?" The little door above the shop jingled as he slipped inside. It was way too late for customers; the coffee shop would have closed up hours ago. But he knew Tracy often stayed late to prep for the next day or have some peace away from an apartment sometimes noisy with her roommate's late night habits.

"I'm back here, Andy." Her voice came from the kitchen, but he frowned at the slight shake in it. She sounded like she'd been crying.

"You okay?" He hurried towards the back, rounding the counter and slipping into the kitchen only to pull up short. Tracy was sitting in one of the chairs beside the counter, in nothing but a slip, one of the straps falling off her shoulder. She'd definitely been crying, and she wasn't alone.

"Weber," Andy said cautiously, glancing between the two. Weber was sitting on the counter just beside Tracy, and he had a very large kitchen knife laying across his lap. Oh god, this was one of those new-guy-in-town-is-actually-a-serial-killer sort of things, wasn't it? Weber always had come on way too friendly.

"Hey, bro."

Tracy hiccupped, a single tear slipping free but she fought back any other noise, her face tinging red with the effort. Andy got a very, very bad feeling in his gut.

"What's going on? Tracy, you okay?"

She started to shake her head, not moving from the chair and Andy wondered why she wasn't just getting up and moving to him. Probably for the same reason he wasn't crossing the room to her. Weber's big damn knife.

"Now, now, Trace, don't be like that. Tell him how happy you are." Andy couldn't help the cant of his head as he stared at the man he barely knew with growing dread. The way he'd said that last bit- it had been different. It had been…familiar.

"I-I'm s-so happy, Andy." Tracy stumbled over the words, hiccupping again. Her hands were shaking and Andy eye's widened in realization of what was happening.

"How-" He turned back to Weber. "How are you-"

Weber smiled. He freaking _smiled_ , like Tracy wasn't sitting there in nothing but her underwear practically sobbing while he held a knife in his hands. "Surprised that there's someone else like you?"

He hopped off the counter and Andy took a step back, eyeing that blade. But Weber didn't turn it on Tracy. He seemed, for the most part, to be ignoring her, his eyes only on Andy. "Now ask me why I'm like you."

It wasn't a command, not like he'd given Tracy and not like Andy had given a hundred people in the last year alone.

"Why…"

"Why, what, Andy? You gotta be specific, man."

That sarcastic tone, that smug little smirk, like all of this was a game, was enough to spark something in him. Andy realized he was angry. Angry enough to focus, to eye that knife with more than just worry. "Why are you like me?"

"Because we're brothers!" Weber cast his hands out, blade getting dangerously close to Trace, who flinched at the wild movement. Andy twitched forward, but Weber didn't notice. He dropped his arms, a manic grin on his face. "Aren't you going to say something, bro?"

"I don't-" Andy blinked, then closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't have a brother."

"Don't say that." The tip of the knife was suddenly aimed in his direction, and Weber jabbed it forward with each word. "Don't."

Andy raised his hands, his pulse rapid. "Okay, just- just calm down, alright? I- what do you mean, we're brothers?"

"I mean we're brothers!" Weber practically screamed it, face red, before he calmed back down. He lowered the knife and took a deep breath. God, Andy though. He's crazy. "Our _mother_ ," the word was spat like a curse, "gave us up. And that doctor helped with the adoption. He split us up!"

He was shaking with rage, and that scared Andy, but not enough to stop the words from going through. "Doctor- wait… are you… are you talking about Dr. Jennings?"

"Yes!" Weber was getting animated again, waiving that knife around. "He split us up, bro. He ruined our lives. So I killed him."

"You-" Andy couldn't breathe. Forget the fact that he had a _brother_ , that brother had just claimed to be a _murderer._ Dr. Jenning's death had hit Andy hard, hard enough to go running back to Tracy, even after he'd told himself she was better off away from him. Weber had been there, he kinda remembered, but he hadn't been paying attention to anyone but Tracy. "You killed…"

"Had him take that useless piece of shit in the sports shop with him. Our father, or so Mom thought. The whore didn't even know for sure."

This went so beyond not being able to breathe. Andy just flat out couldn't _understand_. But his subconscious and his mouth seemed to be doing a hell of a lot better than his brain. "What- our father… our _mother_?"

"I killed her too." A maniacal grin spread across his face as he leaned leisurely against the counter, crossing his legs at the ankle, like they were having a freakin' family reunion and it was just another evening in the whatever-their-last-name-would-be household. "Lit her up like a bonfire. Well, she did the hard part. All I had to do was give her a little nudge."

"Oh my god…" Andy remembered hearing about the woman who had set herself on fire at a gas station just down the road from here. But he hadn't- he didn't know anything about her. And he'd been pretty torn up about Dr. Jennings already. "You killed them. You- _why_?"

Weber frowned again, that agitation coming back. "Because they _split us up_ , Andy. They ruined our lives!"

"So you _killed_ them?!" It was Andy's turn to throw his arms up, staring wide-eyed at this clearly unstable man claiming to be his brother. Andy even believed him, but that didn't make him any less _crazy._ "Weber, you don't just _kill_ people!"

His brother's hand tightened around the hilt of the knife, and Andy backed off, realizing this was not the kind of person – the kind of situation – he wanted to push.

"Look…just, let Tracy go, okay, man?" He glanced at his friend, who was shaking in her chair but hadn't moved. Hadn't even tried to get away. Weber must have told her to stay put. "She doesn't have anything to do with this. This is- this is fam-family stuff, yeah?"

Weber eyed him, like he was trying to decide if he was telling the truth. Finally, the wacko settled again, leaning back against the counter. "I didn't want it to be like this, Andy. If it had been up to me, she'd have thrown herself off the dam and you'd never even know she was gone."

Tracy sobbed, and Weber snapped at her. "What did I tell you about crying?"

"Stop!" Andy raised his hands, both furious and terrified all at one. "Don't talk to her like that. Please. Just let her go."

"It wasn't supposed to go like this," Weber said instead, almost pleadingly, like he wanted Andy to understand. Only Andy really, really didn't. "I would have gotten them all out of the way, it could have just been us, and you wouldn't have known. But he wouldn't let me! He said you needed to be strong, too."

"He?"

"The yellow-eyed man."

Andy couldn't help it. He knew he shouldn't, knew whatever this was, it was balanced on a knife's edge (literally). But this guy was _crazy_. "You're- you're insane."

Weber's eyes darkened, and he pushed off the counter. Andy took a step back. "No. I'm _not._ He came to me in a dream. He came to me a dozen times! He said I had to prove myself. He said if we wanted to win, _we_ had to prove ourselves. And this is how."

He grabbed the blade of the knife and flipped it around, holding the hilt out to Andy, who stared at it, dumbfounded.

"Kill her, Andy. You don't need her. All you need is me."

His eye snapped to his brother's, and it was official. He was _insane_. "Wh-what?"

"Come on, man. You gotta do this."

"No!"

"She's garbage!" Weber gestured to Tracy with his free hand and she flinched violently. Andy clenched his fists, hating the fear in her eyes, the red of her cheeks and the drying tracks from her tears. "They all are, man! We can push them, we can make them do whatever we want! We don't _need_ _any_ of them!"

And just shook his head, well and truly stunned. "You- you can't be this stupid."

Weber pulled up short, obviously not expecting that as one of the multitude of responses Andy could have gone with.

"You find out you have a brother and you- you-" Andy shook his head again. "You call them up! You go for a drink! You don't _kill people!"_

"I know it's all wrong, but don't be mad at me, okay?" Weber shrugged helplessly, a pleading look on his face that Andy wanted to punch right off. "I've wanted to tell you for so long, bro. But he didn't let me."

"The yellow-eyed man." His brother nodded and Andy just shook. "Weber, you sound _crazy_."

"I'm not crazy!" he yelled back, furious. Then something smoothed out on his face, and Andy knew he'd lost him. Weber shook the knife, a clear indication for Andy to take it. "And I'm not waiting anymore. Take it, Andy, or she'll do it for you. Won't you Trace?"

Beside him, Tracy nodded, fresh tears spilling down as she gasped for air.

With a painful swallow, Andy reached out and took the knife. He tried, one more time, to reason with a madman, stalling desperately for time. "She isn't part of this. Please, please just…just let her go, Weber. B-bro. Please."

For a moment, Weber only stared at him and Andy thought, maybe. Maybe he'd gotten through.

"No," his brother said, voice as serious as he'd ever heard the man he barely knew. But there was a smile on his face. It was almost a sympathetic one. It just made Andy sick to his stomach. "I know you better than that, man. You'll never be with me while she's in the way."

"Stop it," Andy commanded, voice deepening, pulling from that power deep inside of him that he'd always felt but honest-to-God ignored whenever it really mattered. He pointed the tip of the knife at his brother, hand shaking, but prepared to use it.

Weber's smile turned bitter, not surprised in the least. And he didn't listen. "Our powers don't work on each other, Andy."

Andy sagged, knife falling to his side. "Please, Weber, this is _insane_. I'm not going to kill her, she's my friend!"

His twin's smile faded into something a lot darker. "Fine. Tracy, do it."

"No!" Andy screamed as she didn't hesitate, opening the drawer closest to her and pulling out a second knife. She raised it to plunge into her own gut and Andy threw his hands out. "Tracy, _stop._ Stop it!"

Her arms shook, knife poised out in front of her, but she didn't move. She _listened_. Her whole body trembled with exertion, her cheeks grew red and puffy, and Andy strained with everything he was as he waited for the balance to tip.

"Put it down, Trace."

"Heh." Webber pushed off the counter, that sympathetic smile slapped back on his face. Tracy didn't put the knife down, but her arms shook harder. "Not bad, bro. But I'm stronger than you. I've been practicing."

He turned his head to look straight at Tracy, something evil in his eye that contorted his whole face. She couldn't help but stare at him, eyes widening. His mouth never moved, he didn't say _a word_ , but Tracy's lip trembled, she sobbed, and her arm twitched.

"Weber, don't-!"

Tracy cried out as she thrust the knife down. Andy stumbled back, red splashed everywhere as she pulled the blade out and plunged it back in, again, and again, and again. She was screaming.

"No!" He ran forward, catching her as she slumped in the chair, the two of them falling to the ground. There was blood everywhere- oh god, there was so much _blood._ Tracy was still trying to raise and lower the knife in an ever-weakening and ashen hand. Andy grabbed onto her wrist, pinning it to her side. It wasn't hard; she didn't have much left in her. "Tracy, Tracy, oh god, stay with me. Please! You're gonna be okay. I'm gonna- I'm gonna get help."

Her lips were moving, but nothing came out, and Andy cupped her cheek with shaking, bloody fingers.

"I can teach you, Andy," Weber was saying, standing over them as he watched the light fade from Tacy's eyes. "I'll teach you how to be strong. We'll do it together, we'll take everyone else out. We'll start with Sam Winchester. He's the one to get, the yellow-eyed man said so. He won't stand a chance against us, bro."

Andy lowered Tracy, his friend, his _love_ , to the ground. Her eyes were still wide with terror but lifeless now. He reached up and closed them, leaving behind streaks of red on her pale, pale skin. He sat there, on his knees, covered in her blood, and couldn't understand what just happened.

"You're insane," he whispered, and reached out to take the knife from Tracy's limp hand. He stood, turned to his brother, and said it again, anger taking over. "You're _insane_."

Weber eyed the knife with a flicker of worry, but smiled that sympathetic smile again. Andy was going to cut it off his face, this time. "I'm your brother, Andy. Family. You're not gonna hurt me. Besides, I told you; I'm stronger than you."

Maybe that was true, but he sure as hell wasn't stronger than a knife.

By the time Andy came back to himself, he was still screaming, over and over and over. Like Tracy had been before she went silent forever. His throat was raw and he had even more blood on him. Weber was dead, knife sticking clear out of his chest, and Andy couldn't stop shaking.

He had to run. He knew he had to run. Tracy was dead because of him and he couldn't stay here.

Andy sunk to the floor, suddenly alone in the all-consuming dark. The smell of blood was thick. It was all around him. On him, on his skin, in his mouth. He could feel it on his hands, slick and warm, and oh god, he was going to be sick.

The sound of someone clapping snapped his head up so fast, Andy got dizzy and had to breathe through the spell. But he stumbled to his feet as soon as he could, back in the coffee shop as the darkness retreated. There was still blood everywhere, but Tracy… Tracy was gone. No body. No Weber. Just puddles and puddles of red.

What was happening? Was he losing his mind?

"Well, well, well." Andy startled, fumbling back as a man stepped from the shadows of the kitchen door, a grin stretched across his face and pale, yellow eyes staring him down. Oh, god, he had gone crazy. As crazy as Weber. "Looks like I put my money on the wrong brother."

"Who- what-" He stumbled back another couple steps, keeping distance between him and the man who couldn't be here, who couldn't even be real. This couldn't be real, he thought, the part of him that was fascinated with philosophy and thought and mind trying desperately to kick into gear over the panic and fear. "This- this isn't real."

"Nope," the man said, popping that last syllable. "Well, murdering your own brother after he killed your girlfriend was. But this is just a bad memory. Gotta tell you, kid, that was something else."

"He- he wasn't my brother," Andy managed to get out, but really, that was hardly the important part. "I- it was- it was self-defense."

Why was he explaining himself to a delusion?

"Regardless." The yellow-eyed man came to a stop at the closest puddle of blood, looking down at it with an analytical eye and absolutely no emotion. "I could use that fratricidal nature, tiger."

"Use… what?" God, Andy really wanted to run, to wake up and find none of this was real. But he knew that it was, at least parts of it. Maybe not the man in front of him, but the blood on the floor. That part was real, no matter how much he wished it wasn't.

The yellow-eyed man leaned against the counter where Weber had, only moments ago. He even crossed his ankles, folded his arms over his chest. Another family reunion. Andy was shaking again. "There's a war coming, kiddo. Didn't your brother tell you? I need soldiers, and you're showing real promise."

"You're- you're not real."

"Not in here, no." The man shrugged one shoulder, and Andy wanted to shake him. To tell him that this, all of this, was _terrible_ , and he ought to be as messed up as Andy. But that seemed like a really bad idea, and Andy just wanted to wake up.

Weber had said this man came to him in a dream. Which meant he was dreaming.

"I need to wake up," he mumbled, and slapped himself across the face as hard as he could. God, it stung. Tracy's blood was smeared across his cheek now. The yellow-eyed man laughed.

"You've got spunk, kid. Way more potential than I pegged you for." He pushed off the counter with a wide smile. Like a shark, Andy thought. "All we gotta do is toughen you up."

Andy scrambled backwards until he hit the kitchen wall. He had to wake up _now_.

"Andy!"

His head snapped to the side as someone called his name. It didn't sound like it was coming from the shop. Maybe outside? The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it.

"Andy, man, wake up!"

He heard it again, from the other side now. A different voice, but one he placed a little faster. "Dean?"

The man – Azazel, he remembered now – was suddenly in front of him and Andy caught his breath, flattening his body against the wall. Those pale yellow eyes regarded him carefully, _suspiciously_ , and he found himself swallowing past the lump of fear in his throat.

"Someone calling you, kiddo?" Yellow Eyes tilted his head to the side, as if he was listening, and Andy was suddenly terrified that he would hear it too.

"Nope. N-Not at all. You know, I-I, uh, I should really go now."

Cold fingers wrapped around his jaw and cheek like a snake strike, and Andy cried out instinctually, flinching away with nowhere to go. The demon was close enough for Andy to feel hot breath on his skin.

 _This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't_ real.

"Tell me, Tiger, where are you right now?"

-o-o-o-

He woke up screaming and, apparently, swinging.

Sam took one right to the face. Dean was lucky enough that when the kid came to yelling _'Get off me!'_ his powers meant Dean was halfway across the room before he could stop himself. Which is probably how Sam took one right in the face. But they got him lucid pretty quickly, even if he couldn't catch his breath for several minutes and ending up emptying his stomach just as soon as he had enough air to do it. Lucky for him, bad nights were a Winchester standard. Dean had already been ready with a bucket.

The ice bucket, it turned out, because they were in a motel, far, far away from Tracy's coffee shop.

"You were having a nightmare," Sam offered when Andy's chest and stomach had stopped heaving.

"No kidding," he gasped out, wiping his mouth with the wet washcloth Dean offered. He wondered if they'd heard him, given how raw his throat felt, or just stumbled on in when they'd come to collect him since it was, apparently, morning. Funny, it didn't feel like he'd slept a wink. "Some nightmare. No wonder Weber lost it."

Sam frowned, glancing over at his brother worriedly, but they didn't push. They apparently had an unspoken rule, and Andy didn't know if he was thankful for that or not.

-o-o-o-

Andy got in the shower while the boys got the Impala packed up. He'd actually been in the shower for over fifteen minutes already and Sam and Dean were just stalling by that point, but neither had any plans to call him out on it. That nightmare had looked like a bad one, and with what the kid had just gone through? There were horror movies with happier endings.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Dean angled his head at Sam's question. His brother was leaning against the driver's side door while the older Winchester did some putzing under the hood. Just checking up on his Baby while they had the time. "I'm not against it, but he doesn't know the first thing about hunting. Or this life. You really thinking dragging him along is the right call?"

Dean wiped his hands on his jeans and closed the hood. "No," he answered honestly, "but he's a part of it now, whether he likes it or not. He wants to opt out, that's fine. We'll get him setup somewhere, teach him the basics of staying safe. But it's not gonna save him, and we both know it."

Sam stared down at the ground, moose-brow furled morosely. "Was he part of the battle royale?"

The older Winchester came around the side of the car and propped himself up a foot or so from Sam. He cleared his throat, eyes off to the side, watching the cars pass by on the main road. "I don't know. I wasn't there and after…. There was enough going on that we never really talked about it."

Because he'd been dead, Sam thought. Yeah, that would have kept him pretty occupied, he figured.

"You never told me names," Dean continued, crossing his legs at the ankle and leaning back against his beloved car, arms crossed. Trying to keep it casual, despite the somber topic. "But you said it was all of Azazel's kids, spread out over weeks. And only one got to walk away. So yeah, pretty sure old Yellow Eyes isn't gonna let Andy out of this one."

Sam kicked at a loose pebble, watching it scatter. "His best bet is with us."

Dean shrugged, but it was obviously the same conclusion he'd already come to. "Azazel nabs either of you, Cold Oak is the first place I'm heading. We'll only get there faster if we know he's missing."

Honestly, Dean hadn't yet come up with a plan to avoid that scenario entirely, though it was on his mind almost every day now. Sam's death date was most of a year away, but he didn't trust Hell to stick to the schedule anymore. They sure as hell hadn't with Dad.

So, Plan B was to head to Cold Oak if Sam went missing. Andy too, now that he was with them. If he chose to stay, of course. But Dean needed a plan A. He and Bobby were already working on one, though at the moment he sure hoped the gruff old hunter was doing better at it than him.

"Alright," Sam conceded, though it hadn't ever been an argument or even a debate. He didn't mind Andy joining them, though it would be weird to have a third person who wasn't Cas (it was still pretty weird when it was Cas). "We'll keep him safe. He doesn't have to hunt if he doesn't want to, though."

"Sure," Dean agreed, because making someone hunt, or even feel like they had to be part of the life with no other choice, was not something he ever planned to force on anyone. He'd grown up like that – seen what it did to someone like Sam, saw what it could have done to Ben, what it did do to Claire – and had promised he'd never be like his own dad. He'd never do that to anyone. "Although, it would be pretty handy, having a Jedi on the team."

Sam just pulled a mild bitchface and pushed off the car. He headed back into the room. Dean thought maybe the water had shut off by then. He couldn't hear it, but then again, he hadn't really been able to hear it running, either.

The truth was, Dean had another reason for wanting Andy along, even though it went against the timeline, and Cas would probably lecture the crap out of him once they found out (Bobby too, most likely). Last time, they hadn't exactly done right by the kid. Andy hadn't done anything wrong, hadn't asked for what happened to him or his powers, and hadn't even misused them. The Winchesters just hadn't been in a great position to take on a passenger, and they'd had no clue what they were leaving him behind to face alone. At the time, they knew he'd have to figure his life out, and the best they could do to help him there was offer a number to call if he needed them.

But now Dean did know what was coming, and he couldn't just leave Andy on his own, at the mercy of Azazel, to eventually be thrown into a fight for his life with no warning and no training. No, they could do better by him this time. What was the point of time-travel, of having to relive all of this crap all over again, if he couldn't do it better?

Plus, it really, really wouldn't hurt to have a Jedi on their side.

-o-o-o-

"So, you wanna talk about it?"

They were back in the car and Dean was driving again. Hunting was actually a lot more driving than the title suggested. They were headed to a town outside Nashville. Apparently, there'd been reports of ghost activity around the area, and some woman named Ellen tipped them off about it. One hunter had already tackled the case and gotten himself laid up with a broken leg and a nasty concussion for his trouble, so she was calling in the cavalry.

"No," Andy answered, maybe a little too quickly and a little too grumpy. Dean's voice had been light, if somewhat forced, and Andy didn't think either of them would push the issue. Even if they probably should. He cleared his throat from the back seat, wrapped his arms around himself and pressed his knees against the seat in front of him. "Maybe later?"

These guys were just trying to help. And if that dream had been real, if that man really was a demon showing up in his dreams to try and… what? Talk him into being a murdering psychopath like Weber? Well…if that was his goal, Andy should definitely tell the Winchesters about it.

Just, how did he do it without bringing up all the rest of it? He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to be dreaming about it. Didn't want to be sleeping at all.

"Ball's in your court, kid," Dean answered easily enough, and that was that.

-o-o-o-

Less than an hour down the road, Andy was playing around with how to bring it up.

 _'So, you know that yellow-eyed guy you mentioned? The demon?'_

No, too casual.

 _'Azazel visited me last night_.'

Okay, too far in the other direction. And sounded like a bad Jesus Freak promo. Only, well, this was apparently the opposite of divine intervention.

 _'So, a yellow-eyed demon walks into a coffee shop…'_

"Hello, Dean. Sam."

Andy screamed.

The younger Winchester, who was driving for once, almost crashed the car into oncoming traffic at the sudden fourth presence in the back seat. Andy kicked at the figure who had freaking _appeared out of nowhere_ , shoving himself across the seat and into the door. She – and it was a woman, despite the deep, gravelly voice – didn't even move. Her head turned like a god damn owl to take him in with a curious blink and a head tilt.

Dean, who had a lot more experience with randomly appearing angels in the back seat of the Impala, jerked his head over his shoulder to glare at their new guest as Sam managed to correct the car and not kill them all. They pulled over, vehicles blasting past them, horns blaring. "Jesus, Cas, give us some warning or something! Do we need to get you a bell?"

The woman (and how the _hell_ was everyone so calm?!) turned stiffly to the hunter in the passenger seat, a little frown pulling at her eyebrows. "Bobby Singer made a similar threat. What would be the purpose of wearing such an instrument?"

"Who _are_ you?!" Andy didn't mean to use his power – or sound quite so hysterical – but he was _freaking the hell out_ back here! Did no one else care that a woman had just popped into existence in their car?!

The lady looked his way again, tilting her head to the side. Like a bird. A bird with big blue eyes that didn't blink nearly as often as they should. "Interesting. You are one of the children infected with demon blood."

Andy sputtered, mind both terrified and blown. Jeez, how many people was he going to run into that his powers didn't work on?

"Your abilities would have to be much stronger to affect me," the woman said, as if reading his mind.

In the driver's seat, Sam's eyebrows went up and he turned to look at the angel directly, now that they were safely pulled over, engine off. "They could affect you?"

"In theory," Cas answered, and Andy was still trying to get further away than was physically possible in the muscle car. "If you were to ingest the amount of demon blood you were drinking at the peak of Dean's notes, then yes. I believe you could contend with a lower angel."

Not that Andy understood half that (and god, the half he did understand he really wished he didn't. When had his life gotten so out of control?) but Sam blanched whiter than rice, and Andy found himself wishing he understood none of it. Or wasn't in the car at all. Or part of this _insane_ duo. Well, hell, _trio_ now.

Was it too late to back out?

"I'm sorry, who the hell _are_ you?!"

-o-o-o-

"Angels. _Angels_." Andy was pacing at the gas station they'd pulled over at. Sam was filling up the tank and Dean had dragged Cas into the store for refreshments and microwaved burritos ( _'People practice, Cas. You need it._ ') Andy spun on Sam. " _Angels_ are real, you guys have one on speed dial, and you didn't think to mention _that_?!"

Sam just shrugged apologetically. He was pretty sure Dean had mentioned it about the same time he'd mentioned being from the future. Not that Andy had been in any shape to hear – let alone process or believe – any of that.

"If it makes you feel better, I'm still getting used to it too."

"No, that doesn't make me feel better! It makes me feel worse!" Andy grabbed at his head. "Jesus, I'm an _atheist!_ "

Sam winced, offering a sympathetic smile. "Dean was, too. Uh…actually, pretty sure he still is."

"He has an angel as a best friend, and you're telling me he doesn't believe in God?"

"Erm…" Sam just shrugged again. "Pretty sure knowing something exists and believing in it are two very different things for my brother."

"You're so _not_ helping." Andy groaned, and the thunk of his head hitting the roof of the Impala was not nearly as soothing as he needed it to be. "You all are crazy. And now I'm crazy too."

Sam patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and put the nozzle back on the pump.

"Welcome to the club."

-o-o-o-

They got back in the car, Dean driving this time, and resumed their trek for a Tennessean ghost. Andy was in the back seat with a freaking _angel_ , who he couldn't stop staring at.

"You look human." He didn't mean to blurt it out, but, well, he'd never been great with holding back even before he got magical powers of speech added on top.

Castiel regarded him without offense. "I am possessing a human vessel. Angels can operate on Earth without one, but few humans can view our true form or hear our voice without taking damage."

"The prophets." Andy nodded absently; that made sense. But he caught the surprised looks the Winchesters sent his way. "What? I grew up in the Bible belt, guys. Sunday school was less optional than actual school."

And also the leading factor of a twelve-year-old Andy deciding a lack of belief was more morally defensible than false belief used only to justify self-interest. The pastor at the church his father dragged him to every Sunday had looked at him long and hard when he'd announced it (loudly) the last time he'd ever gone to service. The man of God bent down, put a hand on his shoulder, told him to believe what was in his heart, and had he ever heard of a philosopher named Marcus Aurelius.

"Um…I'm _twelve_ ," an overly confident and often contemptuous child had answered back. It would be several years before he learned that arrogance and intelligence hand-in-hand usually landed him in the dumpster behind the school gym. At the time, the pastor just laughed.

"You should look into him," he'd said with a wink. "I think he's right up your alley."

Turned out, the pastor hadn't been wrong. Though, personally, Andy preferred turn-of-the-century German philosophers, more of late.

"You are correct," Cas stated, continuing their conversation as if the Winchesters had not interrupted. "The prophets were, indeed, unique individuals able to perceive an angel's true form. I would have thought Sam and Dean, with their destinies, would also be among such men. But Dean has assured me they are not."

"You almost blew out my ear drums the first time we met, Cas." It was not the only time Dean had said as much, though it was news to Andy. "We're sticking with vessels this time."

"Angela is a devout woman," Cas continued, blue eyes still locked on the man sitting beside her, who was kind of enjoying the way she didn't rise to any of Dean's goading but flat-out ignored him instead. It looked like it was ruffling his feathers, so to speak. Andy would have to remember that. "She offered her body in service against the coming apocalypse."

"Uh-huh." Andy frowned, looking at the woman, then the brothers. Dean didn't seem to care so much that their angel buddy was possessing a human, Sam at least looked regretful. Andy figured he didn't have any right to judge someone else's sacrifices, particularly as he was known for not giving people that choice to begin with. At least, not for the last year.

Tracy's pale, blood smeared face flashed across his mind and he flinched, pushing the thought back as quickly and viciously as it had come forward.

"So, you sticking around, Cas?" Dean raised his eyes to the mirror and the angel in the backseat. Subtle change of topic: check. Although Andy could admit he was grateful for it, and for Dean's tact. "We got a ghost in Nashville needs re-deadification."

"That's not a word," Sam and Andy answered at the same time.

"Oh god, now there's two of you," the older hunter groaned. "Don't make me turn this car around, cuz I will."

"That would make reaching Nashville difficult indeed."

Andy stared at the woman in the backseat with him. Huh. Angels with sarcasm, whadya know. Dean, meanwhile, was glaring at her in the mirror.

"Don't make me add you to the list of reasons Cas." He looked back at the road, seemed to think better of it, and was back to glaring at the mirror again. "And don't play dumb, I know devil lady's in there feeding you all this."

"Would 'angel lady' not be a more apt name?" Cas asked, even as Andy tried to figure out who Dean was talking about. But after a pause, Dean muttering that no, absolutely not, that would not be a 'more apt' name, Castiel added, "Angela prefers 'Dragon Lady.'"

The older Winchester rolled his eyes hard enough Andy might have warned him about them getting stuck that way, but he was too busy staring at Cas with wide eyes.

"Wait," he blurted out unintentionally for the second time in less than ten minutes, "there's a _person_ in there?!"

-o-o-o-

Dragon Lady, indeed.

Once Cas and Angela were done lecturing him (my god, he was getting lectured by an _angel_ ), Andy sort of just sat, stunned in the backseat. Not that they'd really lectured him. Well, Cas had _sort of_ lectured him, but it hadn't been like a mom lecture (and the parts of it that had were definitely coming from Angela). No, it had been more of the droning monologue variety, the subject matter being the subtle but numerously intricate differences of the conscious mind versus the unconscious mind, delivered by a professor who only spoke in monotone to a class of mostly asleep students at eight in the morning. Andy hadn't really done the whole college thing, but he was pretty sure Cas just summed the entire experience up for him in seven and a half minutes.

Angela interjected every so often. Andy could tell, because Castiel would use air quotes anytime she did. An angel with sarcasm _and_ air quotes. Good God, maybe he'd been missing out on this whole religion thing, after all.

The short answer, delivered after the long answer, was no, Cas could not stay long or join them for the hunt. She was merely checking in while she had the time to do so. Dean tried to hide his disappointment, but Andy picked up on it easily enough (he wasn't exactly good at hiding it, after all), and glanced between the two of them. Cas seemed aware of it as well, though took careful steps to avoid addressing it.

Good god.

An angel and a human with- with- was that unresolved sexual tension Andy spotted?

Oh, this kept getting better and better (and less and less believable). Well, okay, one-sided sexual tension, as far as Andy could tell. Cas's face didn't really, uh, give away much. Or move. Like _at all_. But Dean's sure did. That might even make it better. Very teenage drama, very _One Tree Hill_. They even had a pair of brothers and everything.

(He had _not_ watched that show voluntarily. It was just one of Tracy's favorites, and she'd dragged him to her house every day after school. In no way ever, on pain of death, would he own up to watching it even after he stopped going over to her house. Nope, no way, you couldn't make him, no amount of money, fine, alright, okay it was a guilty pleasure. Happy? Now shut up.)

Oh yeah, he thought, glancing back and forth between hunter and angel. He'd _definitely_ been missing out on this whole religion thing.

"How's it going up there?" Sam turned in the passenger seat, side-tracking Andy's thoughts.

"Up where?" he wondered aloud, though he already could tell no one was going to answer him.

"Better. It is…comforting to have an ally."

Andy frowned, wondering what they were talking about.

"Yeah, you said you'd spoken to one of your brothers about…everything. That's, uh, going okay?" Sam glanced over at Dean, who was suddenly tight-lipped and ignoring the conversation like it was an Olympic sport.

Andy frowned further as the plot of their teenage drama thickened. Love triangle perhaps? Those were always big on that caliber of crap television. Sam had mentioned a brother, though. Incest was probably a bit much. Family drama, of course, was always a solid go-to. Possible bad guy, then, getting in the way? Unlikely, he supposed, since a brother to Cas meant another angel.

At least Andy knew what they were talking about now. Which probably meant 'up there' was Heaven. Yeah, he should have figured that one out sooner. Again, _atheist_. He wasn't used to thinking about things like Heaven as actual locations one could visit. Or worry about.

Speaking of, why, exactly, were the Winchesters worried about Heaven? Shouldn't Paradise come with, you know, _no worries_?

"Yes," Cas answered the brunet, a tiny smile just in the corner of her mouth. Andy thought it look a little out of place: unpracticed, maybe. "It is going well, Sam, you needn't worry."

The younger Winchester settled back in the front seat, easy as that. Even Dean seemed to relax a fraction, although Andy suspected that had more to do with the conversation moving on than Castiel's reassurances. Still, he sat in the back and watched the three of them interact, forming his own theories (which, albeit, probably had a touch too much trash TV influencing them), since no one seemed very willing to discuss the realities of his – or their – situation with him.

-o-o-o-

Cas rode with them for another hour before announcing, rather abruptly and in the middle of Sam and Dean bickering about what constituted good music ( _'I'm just saying, maybe, just_ once _, we could listen to something recorded_ this _century, Dean'_ ), that she needed to return.

"Yeah, alright. Thanks for checking in," Dean said, somewhat grumpily. He really didn't seem too happy about Cas taking back off for Heaven, which was ringing all sorts of alarm bells for Andy. But, then again, that could just be the teenage love angst talking (who was he kidding, he'd watched _Gilmore Girls_ and _Veronica Mars_ all on his own, no female influence needed. They were _addictive_ , okay? Plus, the girls were hot. And Sam kind of reminded him of this one character…)

"Good luck, Cas," Sam added, and _again_ , Andy wanted to know why an angel needed luck in Heaven.

Castiel leaned forward ever so slightly, then paused, before a little chime like a clerk's desk bell went off inside the car.

"What the hell-"

The angel was gone, leaving Andy staring wide-eyed at the now empty space beside him.

"Damnit, Cas, not when you _leave_!" Dean shouted up at the ceiling. "When you _show up_!"

Andy wondered, vaguely, if an angel could hear human criticism from Heaven. Sure didn't seem to stop Dean.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A** **/Ns** : This is a classic example of how I can never write just one chapter of something. It's always three chapters. Oh, the Andy Episode? Three chapters. Jo episode? Three chapters. Croatoan? Okay, let's not even get into that one. This mother friggin' season's gonna end up being sixty chapters at this rate!_

 ** _Andy Shipping It_** _:_ _I swear, there will be characters in this story that do not ship Destiel. It's not my fault Bobby and Andy are just the first ones to witness it. Jo won't ship it! Or Ellen, or Ash, or Charl- okay, no, Charlie will totally ship it. Uh... I mean...she will, if, we, er, *cough* get to Season 7._ _Yup. Totally smooth exit on that one._

 ** _Up Next_** _: Andy gets his first taste of a real hunt. Upon further introspection, he decides he's a superhero (because he has a cape), quickly realizes that capes are a terrible idea when his tries to murder him, and ends up telling Sam about his late night visitor after Dean decides rock-paper-scissors is a game for children (I swear this all actually happens, I'm not writing drunk)_


	65. Season 2: Chapter 32

_**A/Ns:**_ _I wrote this chapter months ago, so the Avengers reference in it seemed totally innocuous at the time, a bit of fun, you know? Now, of course, it just sounds like I'm still stuck on Endgame… Not that I'm not, or, like, going to see it again this weekend, or anything… XD_

 _ **Reviews**_ _: You all continue to be fantastic and I really really really appreciate it! For the guests reviewing on ff dot net without a login, some of you have been asking fantastic questions or just leaving really wonderful reviews. Please know that I would love to reply to your comments, answer your curiosities, and thank you personally. If that is something you're interested in, please PM me or leave me some sort of contact or something. Whatever works best for you!_

 _ **Chapter Warnings:**_ _Andy's taking advice from Edna Mode, Dean's getting to play with just his absolute favorite of supernatural beasties, and Sam's in a sharing mood. Bring on the capes, coins, and just a sprinkle of silliness._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 32

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The mist was thick, almost fog really, and it hung low in the air, heavy enough to taste the humidity with every breath. It was somehow worse in the cemetery; the trees were slick with it, moss hanging off the branches lowest to the ground, swaying in a wind that didn't seem to exist. The tombstones and above-ground entombments of soldiers long-time passed were hazy silhouettes in the yellow lights of the nearest street and then the grey light of a half-moon once the three hunters ventured further in.

The Winchesters had told Andy to stay in the car, but yeah, no, screw that. That was how people died in horror movies, man. Didn't they know that?

"Can I have a gun?" he asked as he caught up to the two brothers, one armed with shovels and a small duffel, the other with a shotgun. Both of them exchanged looks before answering together.

"No."

Andy made a face, toyed with the idea of making Dean give him the shotgun (although he knew he'd never actually do it. Sam would kill him and then Dean would kill him again once he came out of it. It was a fun thought, though.) "Does a gun even do anything to a ghost?"

"It does when the shell is packed rock-salt."

The kid's brow went up in interest. They'd given him the basic rundown of supernatural baddies and their weaknesses, mostly in response to his stream of questions and curiosity and logistics that kept him from thinking too much about the last few days or the shambles his life was in.

"Bet those aren't standard rounds," he chuckled, quickening his step to come up between them, almost tripping on his robe as it tried to tangle between his legs. "Do you guys pack 'em yourself?"

They looked surprised, exchanging another one of those brotherly-type looks, and Andy glanced between them.

"Really? Bible belt, guys. Practically doubles as the second amendment belt?" Andy laughed again at their faces. "What kind of civilians are you used to dealing with?"

"The kind that would have stayed in the car," Dean emphasized, but his grump was mostly for show.

"Or the kind too shocked by the werewolf breaking into their house to remember where the gun safe is," Sam added and Andy had to concede that point.

He didn't have much experience with guns, himself. He'd shot a rifle a couple of times with some high school buddies, mostly cans and bottles in fields or on camping trips, but it hadn't really been his thing. He knew plenty of hunters, though. The turkey and deer kind, he thought, glancing at the two brothers who were definitely unlike anyone he'd met in his hometown.

Silence fell between the three as they kept moving deeper into the park. Their ghost was old – really old – and that meant the back of the place, apparently. He was civil war era level old, which, according to Sam and Dean, was pretty rare. Most of the time, ghosts hanging around that long were usually taken care of by hunters generations before them. Unless they were newly awoken by something, like an excavation or grave robbery.

Apparently, the only sorts of ghosts who managed to stick around to the triple digits were either in a remote location, kept a low victim count, or were of the rare power level that made them too risky to go after.

"Like the Morton House," Dean said, not that Andy knew what that meant. Sam immediately spared his brother a look.

"No."

"I'm not saying we _go_ ," the older Winchester amended with an eye roll, but Andy kinda had the feeling that's exactly what he was saying. "I'm just using it as an example."

"Do I even want to know?"

Sam shook his head in Andy's direction, hefting the shovels over his shoulder as they picked their way through graves. Andy had been armed with a flashlight and the job of finding their dead Lieutenant ( _'If you're tagging along, you're gonna be useful'_ ) but he wasn't really paying much attention to the passing names. Unfortunately for them, this section of the cemetery was old enough that half the names weren't even visible on the stone anymore, and the county office didn't have accurate plot records for at least a quarter of the park's skeletal residents. It certainly had the potential to be a very long night.

"It's a haunted house famous for its body count. No one even knows if it's one ghost or multiple, but the house locks down once a year at midnight. No hunter has ever come back from it."

"Plenty of school kids looking for a dare haven't come back, either," Dean added, pausing to wipe plant growth off of a tomb so they could properly read the faded name. Not their guy. "And it's one ghost. One pissed off, it-rub-the-lotion-on-its-skin level, pycho ghost."

Sam raised his eyebrows at his brother, but Dean didn't elaborate further. The bitchface Sam pulled clearly said he was the one who didn't want to know, now.

"How has that gone unnoticed?" Andy's eyebrows were also up, but he was focused about the missing kids. "I mean, that many deaths, on the same day, and local authorities haven't looked into it?"

"Because the house is back to normal by the time cops come looking. And no bodies have never turned up, so they're all classified as missing, usually declared runaways." Sam bent down in front of a grave, trying to discern the worn carving on it. He dropped the shovels to the ground beside him. "I think this is it, guys!"

"Thank Christ." Dean passed Andy the shotgun with a pointed look. The kid got a little more serious, giving a nod back as he took it. The older Winchester bent down for a shovel and started clearing the top layer of ground cover that had grown naturally after so many years.

The brothers broke ground and dug for several minutes of mostly silence, offset only by the shovels shifting dirt and the Winchesters occasional grunts of effort and heavy breathing. Andy stood guard, but he wasn't even sure what he was looking for. So, he just kept scanning across the misty landscape, the silhouetted tombs and tree trunks pretty creepy in the darkness.

"Oh yeah, if I was a monster, I'd definitely kill as many people as I could on a night like this." The comment, mentioned offhand, caused both brothers to stop digging, and silence reigned. Andy looked over his shoulder to catch their looks. "What? It's all about mood. Atmosphere! Even monsters understand setting the tone."

Dean shook his head, digging the blade of metal back into the ground. "Thanks for that truly helpful perspective there, kid."

Andy just shrugged, eyes going back to the mist. "Just trying to get in the killer's mind. Profile them. Like the FBI."

"They're monsters," Dean disagreed, groaning with effort against a particularly stubborn tree root that fought back. "This one's an ancient-ass ghost. Don't need profiling to hunt that down, just a good old fashioned salt-n-burn."

They'd made it about a foot down in a roughly six by two rectangle, and Andy grinned at them from the edge. "You know, that's what people in the sixties said about profiling psychopaths. 'They're psychopaths – don't gotta understand them, just gotta catch them.' But profiling actually turned out to be an incredibly useful tool to the FBI."

Sam was giving Dean the kind of look he knew too well. The look that said, ' _He's got a point, you know_.' It'd be a bitchface all of its own number if that look didn't also pull Dean's ass out of the fire on the occasional hunt. The older Winchester stopped digging and leaned against his shovel, glaring up at the much shorter kid instead of his brother.

"Okay, here's my profile of you: you watch too much television."

Andy seemed to think about it, like _really_ think about it, before he turned to Sam and said, completely sincerely, "That's true. See, working already!"

Dean just rolled his eyes and Sam, who hadn't stopped digging, wondered when he became the mule who carried all the gear _and_ did all the work while the other two bickered.

Good god. He'd become a middle child.

"Dig, Dean," he grumbled, though it was mostly good naturedly as his brother grumbled back and kicked the blade into the dirt.

"What else would you profile about me?" Andy crouched at the foot of the grave, maroon robe piling in the loose leaves around his feet. The shotgun was laid across his legs and doing them a whole lot of good. About as much good as their look-out.

"I'll tell you what I'd profile," Dean growled, not stopping digging this time at least. "You need a life. Some grooming wouldn't hurt. Change of wardrobe-"

"Hey, these are _your_ clothes!"

"And you definitely need to get yourself a girlfriend."

The words were out before he had time to think them through. Good natured ribbing that the hunter would lay on just about anyone. Not even targeted specifically at the kid, just pulled from the Dean Winchester library of insults. But as soon as his brain caught up with his tongue, the older man closed his eyes, shovel stilling in the ground.

Silence reigned, and not the good kind.

"…Sorry, kid."

"It's okay." Andy was still crouching, legs like a cricket, a little too pale with a brittle smile on his face. Soon enough, though, it morphed into a weak grin. "It's the robe, isn't it?" He grabbed a hold of one side, holding out the edge like he was a back ally drug dealer with a trench coat full of fake Rolexes and little baggies of the good stuff. "Gives off too much of a 'lives-in-his-mother's-basement' vibe."

Dean huffed something very close to a laugh. Even Sam, who had stilled since the close mishap, shook his head.

"Maybe just a little?" The younger Winchester offered a sympathetic grimace, hand raised with his thumb and forefinger pinched together.

Andy sighed dramatically, and the tension passed. "But it's so comfortable!"

Dean could almost agree – there were days when he longed for his Dead Guy robe (and more so the bunker that came with it) – but that would be too easy. He had a reputation to maintain. So he shook himself back to grumpy.

"Maybe in a house, behind closed doors, buddy, with a white picket fence and a little yapper to go fetch the paper. But not in public, looking like Jerry Maguire and Ferris Bueller had a love child that hasn't showered for a month. And definitely not on a hunt! It's a friggin' work hazard."

Sam was trying to muffle his growing grin, but Andy just scoffed.

"If anything, it's an advantage!" The kid stood, swishing back and forth at the hips. The tails of the robe followed, and Sam kind of wondered when this had become his life. One hunter doing the hula and the other looking close to brotherly-murder-by-shovel. "Free range of movement, flexibility, ectoplasm slime shield-"

Dean reached out, latched onto the end of the fabric, and pulled. Andy yelped as he toppled into the shallow grave, landing in a heap between them. Leaning heavily onto the shovel once more, Dean looked down at his sprawled form with a smile made up entirely of teeth.

"Work hazard."

"So…" Andy sat up. "In that way, it's like a cape."

The older hunter just groaned, throwing his head back in clear defeat, and climbed out of the grave.

Andy scrambled up, soil-spattered robe and all. "And I'm a superhero."

He caught the shovel Dean chucked at him. "Why don't you put those heroic muscles to work, then, _hero_."

Sam, who decided several minutes ago that he was not going to dig this grave single-handedly to the surround-sound background music of two idiots bickering, was leaning on his own shovel when Dean looked his way. Andy started on his first dirt load.

"Whose idea was it for him to tag along?"

"Yours." Sam didn't even hesitate. He probably should have, given the glare he got in return. "Definitely yours."

"Brought two shovels for a reason, Sammy!" Dean hollered, bending down for the shotgun Andy had dropped. Sam rolled his eyes but dug the tip of the blade into the ground and started digging once more.

-o-o-o-

The attack, when it came, wasn't wholly unexpected, but the source of it sure was. Lieutenant James W Barnes' ghost ( _'Look for a metal arm, Sammy! If there's a metal arm in that grave, I'm so keeping it! God, you don't even know, do you? Just wait; 'Winter Soldier' was_ awesome _. Only gotta wait…uh…eight years. Maybe seven?'_ ) reported attacks had suggested a powerful spirit. They were talking level five poltergeist activity, at the least. Ectoplasm had been present at the last two crime scenes, and that slime took a lot of rage and a lot of time.

Sam had only seen the stuff once or twice before in his life. It just didn't make any sense.

They'd spent half the day at the county records office, looking for whatever Lieutenant Barnes could have been tied to, or what might have woken him up. They walked away empty-handed, a day wasted and another victim dead in the time between. The only reason they even knew the identity of the ghost was a witness who'd turned out to have a good eye. Civil War nut, he'd explained, followed quickly by the distant look and numb expression usually acquainted with a witness who knew they couldn't possibly have seen what they'd seen. But the town had a museum dedicated to their fallen soldiers and past wars, and James W Barnes just happened to have a decent photograph taken of him in the war, blown up and hanging next to one of the larger displays of military regalia.

The Winchesters still didn't know what was keeping the Lieutenant tied to Earth, or what the hell he was so pissed off about. The victims had basic community ties to one another, but nothing criminal or particularly malicious. The three of them had spent a second day split between the museum and the public library until the sun set and they'd decided to just go burn some bones, see where that got them.

So when the pretty skeletal visage of James Barnes showed up just shy of the grave, skin hanging off his frame like ripped curtains (and looking nothing like Sebastian Stan, which was a damn shame), Dean had been ready. He pulled the shovel free of the pile of bones they'd just hit and swiped the metal right through the thing's legs. It wasn't pure iron, so it wouldn't last long, but Lieutenant Barnes disappeared with a whoosh and an angry cry.

By then, Andy had the shotgun leveled where the thing had appeared, though the barrel shook ever so slightly where it was braced against his shoulder and his eyes were definitely two sizes too big. Despite that, he was ready. Dean kept the shovel raised like a baseball bat while Sam dropped to his knees and started digging out bones and scraps of fabric and metal adornments with his hands.

What made the attack something none of them were expecting, though, was Andy's clothes to suddenly turn homicidal.

The kid's robe attacked him from behind, the ends coming up and over his head while the belt wrapping around his throat like a hangman's hood and noose. Andy cried out in surprise, the shotgun going off as he struggled, the shot thankfully wide of the Winchesters. The folds of fabric completely entangled the kid and he was hauled back and away from the grave.

His strangled, "Not the cape!" could just be heard through the fabric before Dean recovered was scrambling after him, and Lieutenant Barnes was back. Sam went flying out of the grave as the ghost threw an arm to the side. Dean managed to duck, his brother's limbs tomahawking over him as he dove for the ground and conveniently landed on top of the shotgun Andy had dropped.

He rolled on his back and fired just as the ghost bared down on him. As Barnes disappeared in a wave of blasted smoke, Dean spotted movement in the trees. It was a woman, tucked partially behind a tree, staring right at them. Her lips moved in a chant he couldn't hear, one hand wrapped around the trunk of the tree, the other stretched toward them.

Witch. Great. A witch _and_ a ghost. Or, more like a witch controlling a ghost. Lucky them. At least they'd found their mystery cause behind Lieutenant Barnes' sudden reawakening rage fest.

Dean rolled over and up to one knee, braced the butt of the gun into his shoulder and fired at the bitch. The tree splintered brilliantly with his hit, but the witch managed to duck behind it just in time. Before the hunter could take a second shot, cold fingers dug into the back of his jacket and he cursed as the Lieutenant hauled him up to his feet and sent him flying.

Amidst the chaos, Sam scrambled back towards the grave, snagging the duffel bag they'd brought with them as he slid into the hole. He could hear Andy's muffled hollering and saw the robe haul him up and into the trees, feet kicking with all the kid had in him. The younger Winchester dug the igniter fluid out of the bag with one hand, desperately clawing the bones free of dirt with the other. He upturned the container and squeezed all of its contents across the skeletal remains.

Cold plunged between his shoulder blades like a blade of ice and Sam screamed, body spasming. What felt like freezing water filled his lungs, encased his entire chest cavity. It was so cold he couldn't catch his breath. The young hunter doubled over, clawing at the now gasoline-soaked dirt as he tried to get away from the ghost towering over him, Barnes' arm buried in his back up to the elbow.

"Sam!" Dean, on his knees at the edge of the grave, swung a shovel at the Lieutenant's head. He missed Sam's hunched form by inches and the murderous ghost disappeared with a cry.

Twenty feet up in the trees, legs kicking and most of his body weight hanging from the shoulder seems of his robe to keep the weight off his neck, Andy managed to tear the fabric away from his face just in time to see a normal looking woman run from the treeline straight towards Dean. Her arm was spread out in front of her, fingers strained. The older Winchester was climbing to his feet, using the shovel as a leg up, his back to the woman he couldn't see coming.

"Duck!" Andy yelled without thinking.

Dean and the woman both hit the ground immediately. Whatever she was, she had powers of some sort, as a purple blast erupted from her hand as she hit the deck. The energy flew wide of Dean, but Sam, immune to Andy's command and just straightening up from his bout of ghost-to-the-chest-cavity, was not so lucky. He cried out in surprise and pain as the purple charge toppled him backwards into the grave.

Andy kicked his legs, trying to drop out of the robe, but the tie remained tight around his throat as he struggled with it. The woman – _witch_ , Andy figured out a little too late – snapped her eyes up to his from where she lay on the ground. Oh boy. She was _furious._ Andy had time enough to think _'uh-oh'_ , before the witch threw her hand out at him and the tie around his neck tightened agonizingly. Breathing became more than just difficult, and good god, he was going to die.

Death by bathroom apparel. Unbelievable.

Dean scrambled to his feet and tackled the woman before she could get back up. Her concentration suddenly taken up by the hunter, Andy was able to get his fingers under the fabric and gasped for breath, which he did greedily. Orange light lit the corner of his vision, and he saw Sam scramble out of the grave, lighter in hand, just in time to take a hit from the Lieutenant. Luckily, the blast knocked him clear of the grave, which was now a pit of flames. The ghost stalked after the fallen Winchester, who was clearly struggling to get back to his feet, having taken several hard hits in a row. But as the fire grew, devouring the fuel with loud crackles, the Lieutenant faltered, staggering. He fell to one knee before the downed Winchester, who stared up at him with hopeful relief. Embers lit among the ghost's legs, climbing up and up until he was consumed by the same flames eating away his bones.

He burst out of existence like a firework, and Sam collapsed back to the ground with groan.

Andy managed to rip through the last of his robe, enough to get the straggles of fabric and belt up and over his head. He was just about to tackle how to get down from the tree, assuming the article of clothing would let him – it had started tightening around his wrists and fingers instead – when a woman's scream pierced the air. Andy cried out himself when his robe suddenly stopped holding him up and he dropped out from under it. The limp fabric caught on a passing branch and Andy's arms slid right out of it as he hit the ground below.

It was jarring and it hurt, but Andy stood triumphant and alive, his robe hanging lifeless a dozen feet over his head.

Beside the still burning grave, Dean rolled off of the witch – his hunting knife buried in her chest – and collapsed on the ground, chest heaving. "God damn witches."

Andy had to agree. He stumbled over to the two brothers as they both struggled to sit up, visually checking one another over for injuries before doing the same for him. They were all alive. Bruised and a bit beaten up, maybe. Kind of shocked and rethinking fashion choices, in Andy's case. But alive.

"So…no capes?"

Sam laughed, paused to catch his breath as his ribs ached in protest, then laughed again as Andy offered him a hand. He hauled himself up and off the damp ground with the kid's help. Dean groaned, climbing to his feet as well, but there was a grin on his face regardless.

"Sorry for the whole, 'duck' thing," Andy offered as the older Winchester limped over to them.

"You kidding me?" Dean checked his brother over again with another quick up and down, then repeated the look on Andy. The inspection apparently proved up to snuff as he clapped the kid on the back almost jovially. "You probably saved me one hell of a hit, maybe even a concussion. Magic _hurts_ , dude. And in this line of work, that's another five years, easy, of not drinking my food through a straw. If I make it that long."

Sam, who was halfway to opening his mouth to say, yeah, magic didhurt, jerk, considering he _had_ taken that hit, stopped as Dean's words made it all the way to his brain. He gave his brother the kind of worried look that said he was probably wondering if Dean was concussed anyway. Andy just blinked, looking pleased at first before his face scrunched up in reconsideration, a clear picture of hunter retirement now painted in his mind.

"Dude. That was the most counterproductive victory speech ever."

Dean huffed again and squeezed his shoulder in what doubled as comradery and a painful warning to take the damn compliment. Andy had never had an older brother, but he was pretty sure that was an older brother should clamp right there. "You did good, kid."

"That one was much better," Andy congratulated, but he was smiling widely. "Second attempt for the win."

"Don't make me hurt you." Dean groaned as he bent over and picked up the shotgun, then made his way over to the witch's body. Andy was about to ask what they were supposed to do with her – a little worried about the fact that they'd just _killed_ someone, even if she'd been busy trying to strangle him to death with his favorite robe – when Dean rolled her over with his foot and she toppled into the smoldering grave.

Sam bent down for a shovel, tossing Andy the other one. He sighed – not much of a victory lap – but got to work re-filling the hole they'd spent the night digging. It wasn't easy, in fact the whole night was nothing but sore muscles, a pounding heart, and utter exhaustion. But, the ghost was gone, the woman controlling him dead, and no more people in that small Nashville suburb were going to die unpleasant, unwarranted deaths.

It felt… Andy didn't know. Good wasn't quite right. Not bad, at least.

When they marched back to the Impala an hour later, Sam speculating the witch had been using Lieutenant Barnes' ghost to go after personal grudges, they left Andy's robe hanging in the tree. Its tatters blew gently in the wind that still wasn't really existent, sort of a conquering flag or possibly a symbol of fashion defeat. Solid fifty/fifty, really.

-o-o-o-

Andy was beat by the time they got to the motel. It took everything he had not to fall asleep in the car on their way back into town. Now that he was staring at the bed, so inviting despite its rock-hard springs and paper-thin comforter, Andy didn't know if he'd be able to resist. He couldn't _not_ sleep for the rest of his life. Superhero or not, (cape or no cape), everybody needed sleep.

Sam was climbing into the other bed, having changed into a pair of pajama pants and an old t-shirt while Andy sat on the edge of his mattress, looking miserable. They'd gotten two rooms again, and this time Dean had laid claim – _loud_ claim – to the single, declaring rock-paper-scissors an inadequate and unfair decision making paradigm. Probably because he never won at it. Sam didn't mind, though. He'd been wanting to talk to Andy ever since they'd had to shake him yesterday morning.

"You look terrible," Sam started with a sympathetic moue. "You should get some sleep, Andy."

"I can't. Not when every time I close my eyes, I see…"

Sam looked away, which was his first mistake. As his gaze drifted to the ceiling, he was hit by that brutal image of Jess, pinned and bleeding. The brunet turned his head back to Andy, physically shaking off the terrible vision.

"I get it, man."

Andy sighed and started toeing off his shoes. "I don't think you do, Sam. It's not just…Tracy. It's the yellow-eyed man, too."

"Azazel?" Sam suddenly sat up, worry etched in his frown. He'd wondered at what Andy had said that morning, but he hadn't wanted to push. He'd…kind of been hoping it was nothing. "Andy, did you see Azazel in your dream?"

"I think he knows I'm with you." The kid rubbed at his arms, bare without his robe. They would have to get him a couple sets of his own clothes, soon. He couldn't keep wearing Dean's.

Sam's frown only deepened, but his gaze drifted down to his ow pillow. Andy hardly noticed.

"He's…terrifying, man. I think he might be worse than the nightmares. It was like he was _there_. He was real, and I couldn't get away."

Chewing on his cheek, Sam nodded. Then, out of the blue, he swung his legs off the bed and stood. He swiped his pillow, revealing a weird looking coin lying on the mattress. Andy blinked at it, then up at Sam as the hunter snatched the thing up and made his way to the other side of Andy's bed.

"Uh…Sam?" The younger Winchester didn't say anything, just plopped down on Andy's bed, putting the coin between their two pillows. Andy watched, eyebrows raised, as Sam got under the sheet and blanket, re-arranged the pillows so they were end-to-end and covering the coin completely, then laid his head down. All without a word. "We having a sleepover, buddy?"

"It's magic," Sam said by way of explanation. "A Persian sleep coin; you put it beneath your head while you sleep and you don't dream. Azazel won't be able to find you. We can try it like this, see if we can get two for the price of one."

After all, today's standard pillow wasn't exactly common – or maybe even in existence – back when the thing had first been created. Sam highly doubted there was a clause in the coin's magic that limited it to a single pillow. He didn't know if the spell would work on two people at once, but there was no reason not to try. Andy didn't deserve the torment Azazel had in store, and if the yellow-eyed demon realized who he was with, he would use Andy to find the Winchesters.

In the morning they would make him a hex bag and, if he was willing, find a tattoo parlor to get him warded against demonic possession. But if the coin didn't work for two, they'd have to pray to Cas for a second one, if she could even find another. Sam had sort of been under the impression they shouldn't hail the angel unless it was an emergency. So there was absolutely no harm in trying this, first. Other than a crowded bed and the risk of a nightly visitor.

The kid hesitated, glancing between Sam and the hidden coin before he finally shrugged out of his last shoe and slid awkwardly under the covers.

It was a bit of a tighter fit than was strictly comfortable. Sam wasn't exactly a small man, after all, and the bed was only a double. But Andy was used to sleeping in a van, and Sam had spent his entire life bunking with his brother, so neither of them had much complaint about it. When both woke five hours later from a dreamless sleep, free of their yellow-eyed pursuer, there was no need to discuss the next night's sleeping arrangements. It was a silent agreement between them: a price they were more than willing to pay.

The next morning as they climbed into the Impala, Sam told Dean they wouldn't need two rooms after all. Predictably, the older brother spent the next several minutes shamelessly ribbing the 'happy couple', until Andy leaned over the front seat and said, "You know I can convince you that your shaving cream tastes better than any pie in the world, right?"

Dean snapped his cakehole shut, eyes all squinty in the rear view mirror. "You wouldn't."

"You could just tell him he's deathly allergic and can't ever eat pie again," Sam offered, a shit-eating grin on his face as his brother turned his most scandalous look on him.

"You know, you're right, Sam, I could."

Dean's dropped jaw snapped closed with an audible clack, broken only a moment later to grumble about bitchy passengers not able to take a joke. He put the car into gear and they pulled away from the motel. Sam shared a grin with Andy, who settled into the back seat, rather proud of himself.

Jedi on the team, indeed.

-o-o-o-

Tom sat in front of his laptop (well, it was his ever since he'd murdered the owner) and squinted suspiciously at the screen. He had an internet browser pulled up, page currently displaying a map of the continental United States and a little blinking green dot moving, ever so slowly, along one of the main interstate routes.

The same route, in fact, that it had been moving along for two weeks now. Back and forth. There and back again. And again. This would be the third time the Winchesters were making the trek from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Seattle, Washington.

Tom slammed the laptop shut with a hiss. Fucking Winchesters. They'd planted the damn tracker on a commercial vehicle. He stood, grabbed the broken cocktail glass off the table – Sam Winchester's blood still lining the jagged rim – and snatched his jacket off the back of the chair.

The demon headed out of the rather high-end townhouse he'd been squatting in ever since he'd slit the throats of the couple who owned it and stashed them in their coat closet for safe keeping.

Time for Plan B.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **James W Barnes**_ _: Was actually a real Tennessee soldier in the civil war (no clue on his rank, though). Sometimes I just make up names, sometimes I find real people, and this time I went in search of Tennessee soldiers. I went with James since it was an easy name and there were probably tons of last names to pick from. Turns out, there are tons, and at least 12 pages on dedicated to James Barnes's in the civil war alone. Since Supernatural likes to have such fun and games with names, I figured why not?_

 _ **Reviews:**_ _Please share your thoughts if you have them! As always, thanks for reading :D_


	66. Season 2: Chapter 33

_**A/Ns**_ _: I know many of you have been pondering for quite some time now what's up with Chuck's writing, and whether he's writing details of Dean being from the future. I present: the answer. I've not really written this kind of thing before, where two versions of events are happening simultaneously, so hopefully it comes across clearly._

 ** _Reviews:_** _Thank you everyone who commented or 'pushed' that like button last chapter! We gota lot of newcomers, which is awesome (and to you all I say, Welcome!). I wanna take a min to spotlight something a couple of our binge readers mentioned, which was some form of happiness or surprise that this story had been updated recently, as many lengthy stories don't get finished. Seeing that brought up by multiple people really made me really smile because, honestly? If you'd asked me two years ago if I would still be writing this story today, I probably would have told you no. Would I have said I hope so? Absolutely. But if I'd had to guess and be honest about it, I'd have said that I was likely to lose interest, get disheartened, or just get too busy to write this mammoth all the way through. I'm happy to say the first hasn't occurred in even the slightest, and the last two may be battles I am waging, but I haven't lost yet :)_

 _Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you to those that brought it up, and those who've been with me since the start, or the damn near start, or even just a really long time! It's been a long, but good, two years and I really appreciate that you guys appreciate this story is still going (if that makes any sense). I'm gonna keep working my little butt off (it's really not that little...) to keep it that way for the foreseeable future._

 ** _Chapter Warnings:_** _Chuck's writing, Persephone's reading, Jo's hunting, Dean's scheming, Andy's helping, and Sam just thinks this is all a really bad idea._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 33

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Chuck was nervous. His palms were positively leaking sweat around the stack of papers, and he couldn't seem to stop his whole face from alternating spastically between a smile and a frown, like some sort of crazy person. His cheeks were starting to hurt from it.

"H-Hey, Steph?" He stopped in front of her chair, and it very much had become her chair over the last three weeks. A dilapidated old thing that had more fabric hanging off of it than on it, but she'd seemed quite content with the Lazy Boy, hauling it over to his front window and curled up in it the first time he presented her with something to read. They'd started with an old draft from several books ago. Chuck had offered it to her, suggesting maybe she could read it and then version his publisher had fina'ed, so she got a hang of the kind of editing he went through. And the help maybe he needed after all.

She looked up from that chair now, halfway through the last book he'd sent to his publisher. It hadn't printed yet, and was the first thing 'new' he'd let her read. But it was far too late to make changes to it now. Chuck felt it was safer that way. He'd only managed to hand over old things that maybe he wouldn't feel too crushed over if she didn't like them or had harsh critique. As of yet, she hadn't offered much more than sparse grammatical input (apparently, his was, what was the word she'd used? Lacking.) and many questions concerning where the story might go from there.

"What's up, Chuck?"

He couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his mouth, momentarily distracting him from the fact that he'd been nervous. The slang sounded weird as ever coming from this woman. She alternated between the strangest mix of super-formal English and the kind of vernacular someone picks up from watching entirely too much 90's television shows. Chuck figured it had something to do with English not being her first language, but she hadn't told him much when he'd poked around.

Her super formal training in English, wherever it had come from, made her quite the old-fashioned grammar Nazi, though. Oxford Comma level Nazi. He'd had to remind her several times that that comma was considered optional. She'd just stared at him until he'd told her he couldn't change it, what she was reading was already published.

Okay, so perhaps she hadn't lost every inch of that intimidating persona he'd first met. Still, he supposed being a grammar Nazi wasn't a bad thing in her job, though. Maybe she just scared her clients into writing faster.

"Here." Chuck thrust the papers he was holding towards her. It was only a couple of chapters stapled together, not quite the thick stack of a finished book like she was currently reading. "I, uh…it's new. Unpublished, I mean. Uh…ripe for…critique. I-If you… wanna take a stab at it?"

Stephanie sat up, eyes wider with interest. She took the papers from him, noticing his nervousness as he clutched them a tad too tight and took a second too long to let them go. When he finally did, she settled back in the chair, but stared up at him instead of the chapters now in resting against her drawn up knees. "You're finished with it, then?"

"Uh…not…completely. It's- It's just a first draft."

Which was a lie. He'd already been through three different editing passes on it, which was about two and a half more than he usually did, but he really wanted her to like it. Or, at least, he thought he did. He wasn't used to anyone but Sera – his publisher – reading them before they were printed. It opened up a whole new round of possible rejection (disdain, disinterest, repulsion. Straight up laughing in his face. Etc, etc), and Chuck wasn't so great with that.

"Okay."

She tucked her legs back under her and dug in to the first page with no further ado. Chuck stood there for another moment, awkward, before he turned and shuffled back to his desk.

-o-o-o-

When Jo Harvelle's number popped up on his cell's display, the thing ringing away in his pocket, Dean couldn't say he was surprised. He hadn't been expecting it down to the minute or anything, but he had been expecting it for the last week or two.

"Hey there, Jo," he answered easily, sliding into the diner booth that Andy and Sam already occupied. He was still making them pay for their threats by dragging them to every single diner that boasted about 'world famous' pie.

"How far are you from Philly?"

Straight to the point then. Dean pulled the phone away to glance at it like he could actually pass on that raised brow straight through to the demanding girl on the other end of the line. "Hello to you, too."

He could practically hear the eye roll. "Dean. I'm serious."

"Four hours," he supplied, while Sam tried to ask what was going on with just his face. "You got a case?"

"Yeah, I got a case. Three weeks ago, a girl disappeared from a Philadelphia apartment, and she wasn't the first." Dean remembered the hunt. It had been the reason he'd expected Jo's call. It had been her case, though he remembered them snaking it from her on Ellen's request. Not that that had stopped her for long. She'd her to show up before they even got started. "Over the past eighty years, six women have vanished. All from the same building-"

"Your mother know you're on a hunt?" Dean couldn't help but interrupt. He didn't need the details or the sell, anyway. They were obviously going.

"What makes you think I'm on it?" He could practically see her evasive eyes dart to the side, that smirk playing at the corner of her lips to cover her unease. "I could just be calling you with the details."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Right. Only this isn't the Roadhouse landline, and I'm not an idiot."

"Fine," Jo bit back, and he practically hear the pursed lips and terse face. "I'm on it. I've rented the apartment-"

Despite Sam now trying to flag him down for details and Andy glancing back and forth between the two of them, Dean ignored them both. He closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. God damn it. She wasn't supposed to beat them there. "Jo-"

"There's _ectoplasm_ here, Dean. This is one seriously pissed off ghost we're dealing with."

" _Jo_ -"

"I've gone back through the building's history-"

"Are you insane?" Her stream of excited words died abruptly, and Dean sighed. "You're practically a walking billboard for this guy's type, and you went into that apartment _alone_?"

Now Sam was looking decidedly worried, which he had every reason to be, even if he didn't know the details. The other end of the call went dead quiet, and Dean knew he'd pissed her off. He just hope she didn't hang up on him without handing over an address first.

"How do you know I'm his type?"

"What?"

"The ghost," she clarified, voice clipped. "How do you know he has a type?"

Well, crap.

"Lucky guess." Dean ran a hand down his face, angry at himself and the situation. She hadn't said anything about the victims, other than they were young girls, had she? He hadn't let her get that far. Son of a bitch. It was time to switch tactics. "You calling us for backup? You better be calling for backup, or I'm calling your mother."

Jo snorted. "What's she going to do?"

Which was a fair question, but so not the point. "Jo."

"Yes." The word was practically spat, but Dean didn't really care. It was the one he needed to hear. "I…could use some backup, alright? You gonna step up, or you gonna tattle on me?"

"We'll be there in four hours. Text me the address." Dean pulled the phone away from his ear, then thought better of it. "And don't hunt this thing on your own, you got that?"

"I'm not a child, Dean."

"No, what you are is new to this, and your mother will murder me if you get dead. So sit tight – _not_ in the building – until we get there."

He hung up before she could answer, knowing she would only argue. Even thought she was smart enough to know she was over her head, even though she'd called for backup. Jo was tenacious as hell and didn't know how to stop. Dean just hoped she actually listened this once.

Ellen wouldn't have to kill him if anything happened to her, he'd friggin' do it himself.

Their waitress came over as Dean tucked his phone away, Sam already asking what was going on while digging out his wallet. The older Winchester still didn't answer, instead smiling tightly up at their server.

"We'll take that pie to go."

-o-o-o-

"Jo Harvelle is the daughter of the bar owner, yes? The…Roadhouse?"

Chuck looked up from his laptop. It had only been ten minutes or so, but Steph was several pages in. He rubbed at his chin, trying not to be self-conscious. It was just a question. An innocent question. "Yep, that's her. Jo and Ellen Harvelle."

Steph hummed noncommittally and went back to the chapter. Chuck hesitated, opened his mouth, closed his mouth, decided she probably didn't want to be interrupted, and went back to typing.

"How does Dean know the ghost's type?"

Chuck stopped again. "Huh?"

"Dean said she fit the ghost's type. How did he know?"

"Uh…." Chuck smiled, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "Just wait, you'll find out."

Steph narrowed her eyes at him, but she looked more putout than angry. So Chuck laughed nervously before going back to his writing. Eventually, she went back to the story, but he couldn't help glancing over at her with every page flip.

-o-o-o-

As they exited the diner, they were intercepted by a middle-aged man in a business suit before they could make it to the Impala.

"Excuse me, gentlemen?" The trio pulled up short at the incredibly average looking man heading towards them from the direction of their car. He was Caucasian, maybe early forties, with close-cut, pale hair, the beginnings of a receding hairline, and a stiff smile. Dean was immediately on guard, though nothing particularly screamed danger. "I'm looking for a gas station. Do you know where the nearest one is?"

Dean and Sam exchanged glances, Andy quiet behind them. Sam took one for the team, turning a friendly smile on the stranger. "We passed one on our way in. Two blocks up the road that way. On the right."

The man smiled and dipped his head. "Thanks, thank you very much."

And then he turned and walked in the direction Sam had indicated.

"That was weird." The two brothers turned to Andy, who was still staring after the guy. He glanced between them. "Was that weird? Felt weird."

"It was weird alright," Dean mumbled, glancing back over his shoulder at the retreating figure. "That was an angel."

"Wait, what?" Sam straightened, forehead smoothing out as he whipped his gaze back at the stranger in a damn near comical double take.

"For real?" Andy asked at the same time, eyebrows climbing towards his hair. " _That_ was an angel? Like Cas?"

"Yeah." Dean was still watching the man, who made it past the next building and a row of hedges, both of which obscured him from sight. The hunter rubbed at his chest absently. He turned and headed for the Impala, the other two following, asking a million questions a minute, but Dean was busy wondering if that had happened the first time around.

He was sure it had been an angel. He'd seen enough of them, knew how they held themselves stiff in their vessels, the holier than though vibe that just wafted off of them in waves. But was this new? Was it a result of them going off radar, or had this happened the first time? Dean from 2006 wouldn't have thought anything of a weird guy in a suit who didn't leave much of an impression other than 'odd.'

Cas had said Heaven was likely watching them and would notice when they dropped off the grid. Hell had taken a crack at tracking them down. Was this Heaven's turn?

Dean angled another look over his shoulder in the direction the angel had gone, but there was nothing to see. He pulled open the driver's door and got in the car, the other two following, still bugging him for answers. They'd have to check the Impala over for trackers, _again_ , but they couldn't do it there.

-o-o-o-

The hex bag was missing from the wheel well. They didn't see any other evidence of tracking devices, supernatural or man-made, or tampering at all. It didn't surprise Dean that Heaven was less technologically savvy than Hell. Went with that whole holier-than-though crap.

"We'll have to make another one." Sam glanced towards the trunk, trying to calculate how much they had left of their ingredients. They'd made one for Andy, and Dean had lost one on a hunt a couple weeks ago (' _What do you want me to say, Sam? The thing must have fallen out. I was a little pre-occupied not becoming Vamp meat!'_ ). Sam was certain they had enough to replace the one in the Impala, but after that, he wasn't sure. He made a mental note to talk to Cas about getting some more the next time they saw her.

"Yeah," Dean growled, though it wasn't Sam he was annoyed at. No one touched his Baby, and now Heaven and Hell had both put their stinkin' mitts on her. Sons of bitches, all of them. "We should up the warding on her too. Make it harder for them to mess with her."

He hadn't wanted to put the hex bag in the interior, because, _hexbags_ , damnit. But maybe they would have to. Only problem was, they couldn't ward the car against angels getting in without locking Cas out too. But clearly, they were going to have to start getting a little more creative in their defense.

"We should keep moving." Dean headed back for the front of the car. Heaven probably wasn't doing anything more than tracking their movements – he hadn't spotted anyone following them and Cas had seem pretty unconcerned with the surveillance – but he didn't want to risk them dropping by for a listen. He really didn't want to go back to worrying about what he could say out loud again.

First chance they got, he was warding the car six ways from Sunday.

-o-o-o-

"Who was the man in the suit?"

Chuck stopped writing again, looking over the top of his computer to the woman still curled in her chair, but staring at him expectantly. He blinked.

"You wrote him into the scene, yet he left without any relevant purpose." Stephanie looked almost annoyed at the inconvenience of one of the basic components to any plot and, for an editor, Chuck kinda wondered how many books she'd read before this one. "You must have had a reason to include him."

"You did not ask this many questions when you read the other drafts."

She shrugged one unapologetic shoulder in his general direction. "I had already read the finished book. I knew the answers."

"Yeah, well," Chuck gave the stack of papers in her hands a pointed look, "you'll know these answers when you finish reading this book."

Those green eyes narrowed on him again.

"Isn't that what an editor does?" he prodded, before realizing with a pleasant jolt of surprise that he was teasing her. Without fear of death-by-eye-daggers-or-possibly-dismemberment, even. When her narrowed-eyed stare didn't get worse but shifted more into a put upon glare, Chuck relaxed ever so slightly and that tiny little ball of confidence deep down inside him – more of a pea than a ball, really – grew just a little bit bigger.

Stephanie ducked her head back into the story, but not before correcting, "Editorial assistant."

Chuck shook his head and tried to focus on typing.

-o-o-o-

"What are we going to tell her?" Sam asked after the silence in the car had lasted more than fifty miles, the talk of angels and demons dropping off about an hour ago. Dean twitched in the driver's seat, already uncomfortable with the new choice of topic.

"Nothing."

Sam just turned his head to his brother and stared, unimpressed. "Dean," he admonished, that kindergarten-teacher-lecturing-the-slow-kid voice in full gear. "She going to know something's up. How are we going to explain knowing so much about the case?"

Andy's head popped up between theirs, causing Dean to lean away with a tsking sound. The kid really should give them some warning. And wear his damn seatbelt!

"Wait, is this about you being from the future?" Andy asked, arms crossed over the front of the seat, head resting on them as he glanced between the two brothers like an up-close tennis match. So up close, he was pretty much the net in this metaphor.

"What else?" Dean grumbled. He lifted one hand from the steering wheel and made it halfway to his chest before he realized what he was doing and, reluctantly, put his hand back on his Baby. He was well aware of his brother's eyes on him the entire time.

Andy either didn't notice, hadn't spotted the tick in general, or decided not to comment. Instead, he frowned, tilting his head so his cheek was pressed into his wrist as he looked at Dean. "We can't just tell her?"

The older Winchester angled a pointed side-eye in the kid's direction. "You know, most people don't just _believe_ you when you say something like that."

Their resident third wheel just shrugged. True enough. He wouldn't have believed it himself, if Dean hadn't admitted it under Andy's power. Actually, he still wasn't sure he believed it. This could all be a psychotic break, and he was locked in his head, rocking back and forth in the corner of a padded room muttering 'yellow-eyed demon' and 'ghosts' over and over again to the wall.

That scenario was really just as likely, he figured.

"So we're going to lie to her, instead?" Sam got them back on track, though his tone lot a left to be desired, support wise. Dean was back to twitchy. He wasn't exactly thrilled about lying to Jo either, thank you very much, but it was their safest option. "She's not stupid, you know. She's going to know something's up."

"We'll…stick with the psychic story if we have to tell her something."

Dean gave up trying not to and rubbed at his chest, and ended up doing it a little more harshly than was strictly necessary. It wasn't aching, not like it did around a demon, but sternum-Cas wasn't sitting well today and Dean didn't like it. Whether it was the angel they'd bumped into back at the diner or the fact he basically scheming against a friend ( _family_ ), Dean didn't actually know. Probably both. He was starting to think the angel didn't like it when he lied, and if that was what was going on, well Cas was gonna have to just learn to deal. He'd been lying for nine damn months now and his little chest angel hadn't had anything to say for any of that.

(Not true, but also not supportive of his point, so that truth could shove it, as well)

"The less people that know about this, the better," he added, partially for Sam who was still sitting there with a half-formed bitchface (hard to tell which one, since it was still evolving, but Dean guessed it was lucky #1), and partially maybe also for Cas, too. Lying to their friends might suck balls, but pretending to be psychic was easier than explaining where he was actually from.

Sam didn't say anything, and Andy resettled his chin on his arms. He stared out the window, thinking idly, before asked, almost casually, "So…what was the plan again?"

Dean rolled his eyes but outlined the facts of the case again. Their perp was Herman Webster Mudgett, aka H.H. Holmes. (' _Wait, like, the Murder Hotel guy? The Chicago World Fair guy? America's first_ serial killer _? That H.H. Holmes?_ That's _our ghost?!')_ The lot next door to the prison where he'd been hung and someone had decided, decades later, 'yeah, let's put an apartment complex here.' Jo playing bait because she was young, blonde, and female. And the subsequent race to find her in the walls-slash-basement-slash-sewer-slash-torture-chamber.

"We push Jo towards the empty lot and the basement," the hunter decided, wringing his hands along the steering wheel as he all but thought aloud about it. "We lead her to the answers we already know, let her think she figured them out herself. It's what I used to before, with Sam."

"You did?"

He didn't bother explaining, despite his brother's pinched eyebrows and affronted tone. Dean really didn't want to get any further into this mess – or the potential this had to become an absolute mess - than they already were. They just needed to lead Jo to H.H. Holmes and his underground chamber _without_ getting her kidnapped or used as bait, or suspicious of them in the slightest.

How hard could that be?

-o-o-o-

Dean needed to stop asking himself, or Time, or destiny, or what-the-fuck-ever, that question.

Jo was waiting for them when they pulled up to the apartment complex, along with half a dozen cops and three cruisers. The three exchanged looks inside the Impala as they had to circle the block and find a place to park. Jo followed after them, rounding the corner just as they pulled curbside and shut the engine off.

"They must have found another girl," Dean muttered as they climbed out of the car. He vaguely remembered another vic getting nabbed while they'd been out looking for their ghost. He was pretty sure they'd her out alive, though. He vaguely recalled finding Jo and another girl. But then they'd had to turn around and use Jo as bait, yet again, because they'd had nothing else to draw Holmes back with.

If they could just get to that underground chamber and trap the ghost again, they'd be in and out in half a day, tops. Of course, they had to somehow manage all of that with Jo hanging around, chomping at the bit for a slice of the action, and they couldn't tell her how they knew the where and the when and the how and the why.

How did that saying go? Three people can keep a secret….

That wasn't even funny, in their line of work.

"He took another one. Teresa Ellis, apartment 2F," were the first words out of her mouth. Angry words. She pinned Dean with a look that definitely could have maimed, if not killed. "I could have stopped it!"

"No, you couldn't have." There was no use pulling punches, even when he knew they'd hurt. Jo was feeling the guilt every hunter with half a conscience felt when they lost someone on a hunt. But he knew from previous experience that even if they'd shown up a whole day earlier, they still wouldn't have keep Holmes from taking his most recent victim.

He also knew that victim was still alive and they had time to find her. They just had to figure out how to skip a day of research and searching, and get to the good part without mentioning Dean was form the future, Andy was a Jedi, and Sam saw dead people.

Oh, right. And they had a fiery Harvelle woman on their hands.

Awesome. This was going just _so_ great already.

"I've had it up to here with your crap!" Jo crowded right into his personal space, glaring up at him with as much ferocity as he'd ever seen in her. Dean stared right back, like he had once before, ten years ago. Only now he knew so much more than he had then. "If you think I can't do the job, then why did you even come?"

"I came because this isn't amateur hour, okay?" His words were just as biting as hers, his tone booking just as little room for argument. "You wanna be a hunter? Great. You're going to be a badass someday, Jo, I know it. But you don't start at level ten – no one does – and if you go into this thinking you know what you're doing, you're gonna get yourself killed."

Behind him, Sam held Andy back with a hand, the two of them a few feet further off and distinctly uncomfortable to be both on the sidelines of this conversation and sidelined by the conversation. The couple of feet Sam gave the two wasn't exactly privacy – there was no way this chat was getting that – but it was something. In front of him, Dean watched Jo grind her teeth together, her jaw clenched and vein pulsing, arms crossed defensively over her chest. But all Dean saw was a girl used to having to prove herself to every man who ever set foot in her home, and now she was putting on a damn good face when she didn't need to. Not around him. She just didn't know that yet.

Her eyes darted between his, and whatever she was looking for, she finally backed off a step, turning to the other two, instead. "Who's he?"

Subtle change of topic: check. Dean let her have it.

Andy's eyes widened at suddenly being addressed by this very, very angry chick, and he looked from one brother to the other before pushing past Sam to hold his hand out. "I'm Andy. I'm, um… just tagging along?"

One fine eyebrow rose even as Andy looked back at Sam to see if he'd gotten that even close to right. Especially once she didn't take his hand, and he dropped it awkwardly.

Jo looked back over her shoulder at Dean. "Not amateur hour, huh?"

The older Winchester just huffed. "It's good, Jo. He's with us."

She turned back around, not satisfied but not pushing it either, and Sam asked where she was with the case. Jo's eyes hardened and she held herself straighter, launching into the details she'd gathered and the reconnaissance she'd done so far. Dean had to give all three of them credit: she'd done her research and a lot of the legwork, and Sam and Andy kept straight faces, nothing in their questions or responses hinting that they already knew a lot of what she was telling them.

"I smelled something in the hallway last night while I was doing a search, and… I think something made a grab for me, but I didn't see it." Jo crossed her arms, looking pissed at herself for not doing better and acting defensive as hell, worried they might have similar thoughts. "I think it's in the walls."

"Sounds like solid recon," Sam responded with an encouraging smile, clearly having noticed the same thing as Dean. Jo was too hard on herself, thought she had too much to prove, and was going to get herself killed trying to do it. "Let's get inside, see what we can find together."

They grabbed their gear out of the trunk and Jo led them past the police and up to the apartment. Dean let out a whistle once they got upstairs. All of Jo's research was spread out on the kitchen table. He'd forgotten how good a file she put together.

"This is impressive," Sam agreed, pushing some newspaper clippings aside to reveal building blueprints.

"Put it together myself." Jo came up beside the taller man with a wry smile. "It's definitely a ghost, the ectoplasm confirms it, but I can't figure out what he's tied to, or who he is. This place was built in 1924 as a warehouse, it wasn't converted into apartments until a few months ago. Before that, it was an empty field."

"So, the most likely scenario would be someone died bloody in the building." Sam played along, bobbing his head. He wasn't exactly an Oscar nominee, but he'd played enough roles through their time as hunters to not sound too forced.

"I already checked." Jo crossed her arms, staring down at the spread of information. "In the past eighty-two years, zero violent deaths. Unless you count a janitor who slipped on a wet floor."

The Winchesters tried three times each to follow her research and get it where they needed to go without making big jumps. In the walls, basement, possible bloody death before the building. Each time fell flat, with Jo getting more and more obstinate about what she'd already learned and what she'd crossed off. Not to mention the growing suspicion as she stared at each of their fumbled attempts. Finally, Jo uncrossed her arms and focused a narrow gaze as fierce as her mother between the two Winchesters.

"Why are you guys acting weird?"

"You're acting weird."

Sam couldn't even suppress the sigh, that time, and Jo raised an unimpressed brow at the older Winchester.

"Nice comeback. You practice that all morning?"

"Shut up," Dean grumbled.

Jo launched back into her theory of a cursed object or something their ghost must be tied to. They'd have to sweep each apartment one by one, and should split up to do it. Which was a total waste of time and absolutely not what they needed to do. Dean was still trying to figure out how they were going to push her towards the empty lot without making things even more obvious when Andy interrupted, surprising all three of them.

"What about the surrounding buildings?" He was leaning on locked arms across the table from them, staring down at the photos and clippings. The kid glanced up, blinking in turn at the stares.

Jo regarded him with narrowed eyes, before glancing at both brothers and shooting back, "What about them?"

"Uh, I just mean… Did anyone die bloody in those?"

Dean blinked, realizing that they'd completely ignored one of their greatest assets. And it wasn't Andy's super-power (no way in hell he'd ever let the kid control Jo, or any hunter for that matter). No, it was his complete naivety to this scene. To hunting. They could blame his leaps of thought and easily missed information that any hunter should know as amateur hour. In the meantime, Dean and Sam could fill in the gaps, as if the kid's out-of-the-box thinking (cough, amateur, cough) was inspiration. Damn. He should have hired Andy as his unintentional cover nine months ago. He'd have had way less anxiety around Sam and Bobby at the time.

(Also, so not true, and totally wouldn't have worked. But, again, not supportive of his point here, so reality and fact-checking could just shove it.)

"How close does proximity matter to a dead guy?" Andy continued, shrugging a little self-consciously as Jo's stare lingered. "If he's an angry ghost wanting to kill girls, he's kinda gotta go where the girls are. Like…an apartment complex."

The younger hunter rolled her eyes, clearly more annoyed now than ever that Dean had brought a total noob along. And after giving her crap for her own slim resume. "That's not how _ghosts_ work. They can't leave whatever they're bound to. If he died in one of the surrounding buildings, he'd be stuck haunting _that_ building."

"Wait, he might be on to something," Sam parried before the lead Andy gave them grew too cold to use. Unfortunately for them, it only seemed to make Jo more annoyed. Right, because now the noob was upstaging her, and the Winchesters had his back. Good god, this was gonna turn into a feminism thing, Dean could just taste it. "You said this plot used to be a field. Did any of the surrounding buildings ever utilize it? Maybe that's why we can't find a violent death; it happened before this place was built."

"Uh…" Jo set aside her irritation and started pushing through the spread of papers until she found photos of the lot prior to construction. She laid it down for all of them to look at. "Here. This is the field. The surrounding buildings…Oh. Look at that."

She pulled back, both vexation and surprise flashing across her face before she grew serious again. "This building here. There are bars on the windows."

"A prison." Dean glanced at Sam and Andy. So far, so good. And all they'd had to do was bring along a hunter even less experienced then her and then given him all the answers. By her crossed arms and the none-too-happy glare she was throwing Andy's way, things were going just great there.

"I'll check the records," Sam said immediately, digging his laptop out of his backpack before the words were even out of his mouth. "Up until the nineteen hundreds, prisons were still executing people by hanging. Maybe they used the field."

Dean let out a silent breath of air as the team went to work. Yeah, Jo might be pissed off at all of them, but maybe, just maybe, they'd pull this off without her getting up close and personal with a serial killer.

-o-o-o-

Fifteen minutes later, Sam came back with H.H. Holmes' name. Jo whistled. She sure knew how to pick them. That got them to his Murder Hotel, and the likelihood of him in the walls.

"We need to get in there," Jo said immediately, already up and moving.

"What about the basement?" Dean resisted the urge to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose. Damnit, he knew there wasn't a basement in this building. That's not what he'd meant. "That murder hotel had a torture chamber thing in the basement, right?"

"This building doesn't have a basement," Jo replied, once again looking at him weirdly, like she couldn't decide if he wasn't nearly as good at this as her mom had led her to believe, or if he was just having a really, really off day.

He hoped she went with the latter.

"I know, I meant- uh… what if it…did?"

A really, really, _really_ off day.

"Like a sewer system?" Andy asked, staring at him a little too blandly. Again, Dean wondered where the kid had been the last half a year. And where his own brain was now, because the answer clearly wasn't in his skull.

"Yeah, like that. This guy was known for trap rooms and stuff. We should cover all our bases." Dean got a supportive nod from Sam, of course, and turned a look he hoped came off as confident and not cautious-as-hell in Jo's direction.

She stared at them for an eternity, a weird and unreadable look on her face, before finally saying, "Fine. We split up. Check the walls and the sewers."

"No chance in hell. We stay together," Dean countered immediately, a tight-lipped smile in place and a tone that booked no room for argument.

Jo crossed her arms and the effort not to roll her eyes was visible in the clench of her jaw. "It'll be faster if we all split up."

"How about pairs?" Sam offered, ever the peace-keeper. He glanced between the two feuding hunters, arms raised in partial placation. "Dean and I have the most experience, we'll each take one of you."

"Dibbs." The older Winchester sidled up to Jo, and if looks could kill, he'd be six feet under. Twice. Dean gestured to the other men in the room. "You two are on wall duty. Jo and I've got the sewer."

If he thought that might appease her, he was sorely mistaken. Instead, he got a cantankerous young hunter itching for a hunt she had every right to lay claim to, thinking he was confining her to a wild goose chase after a basement that didn't exist. She looked about ready to skin him alive by the time they gathered their gear and headed out.

Had he mentioned being from the future and knowing everything _sucked_? Cuz it absolutely did.

As they parted ways, Dean pulled Sam to the side and told him to forget the walls, grab a crap-ton of salt, rope to spring a trap, and a cement truck. He and Jo would figure out how to lure Holmes into the basement, and they'd trap him there for good, just like last time. With Jo already down there, Dean figured there was a good chance their ghost would follow.

-o-o-o-

Stephanie handed the chapters back over to Chuck, who was still writing the rest. He smiled up at her. "So?"

"I would like the rest when you are finished."

With that, and absolutely nothing more, she turned and headed back for her chair, leaving Chuck – and not Chuck – to stare after her, a touch disappointed (and a touch annoyed at the bossiness, which he was pretty sure wasn't bossiness, just directness, but on a woman intimidating as that, it sure as hell read as bossiness). The writer set the pages down beside his laptop, sighed, fidgeted, though he couldn't quite place what left him fidgeting, and hit the print command on his laptop for the rest of what he'd gotten down so far.

He could feel another headache coming on already.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **Quality**_ _: I hope it didn't come across as being a little off, but I struggled with this one. Partly because I got halfway through it before realizing I hadn't planned it out well enough and had to sort of spot fix, partly because Jo Harvelle ended up being hard to right. I don't like angry characters, and she was kinda angry in this episode, feeling like she had to prove herself and be on the defensive. And Dean just made that even worse in our timeline. Which is so not fair. I'm the writer! I should get to decide whether or not Dean makes my job harder._

… _It just, it really doesn't work out that way. Ever. (Looking at you, lady!Cas -_-) I feel so, so much more for Chuck now. Being 'God' sucks._

 _(Also, can we talk about how uncomfortable I just got calling myself 'god'? *shudder* No thank you.)_

 _ **The Bitchface List:**_ _I don't always like to write out which bitchface is which in the chapter, because that format feels repetitive, or some of them are just too long and interrupt flow if they're used too often. But I do feel like I should put this list somewhere you guys have access to it… How does the Deleted Scenes sister story sound? I'll post it as its own chapter so you all have it as a reference if you want it._

 _I'll post the April Fool's chapter there too. I know some people mentioned not getting to read it (you're not really missing *that* much. Just some cockroaches, guys, I swear ;)_

 _Btw, Bitchface #1 is_ 'What, that doesn't make any sense, Dean. Don't be an idiot.' _I honestly don't think we've used it since, like…chapter 2. And not Season 2: Chapter 2. No, I mean…chapter 2. So it deserves an A/N just this once._

 _ **Reviews:**_ _I will try to get to some review-replies this weekend! Sorry to keep you all waiting, I'm quite terrible at this part, but I really do like to answer you guys and acknowledge (and appreciate) your comments!_


	67. Season 2: Chapter 34

_**A/Ns:**_ _Thought I'd post a little early this weekend to make up for the lack of post, review replies, or Bitchface List update last weekend._

 _ **Speaking of:**_ _Whelp, I'm not dead (obviously), but I did end up in the ER for a while there. A couple weeks of depression mixed with this endless, stupid, friggin' back issue of mine, all came to a head in the form of a nasty drug interaction. One morning my brain woke up and thought, 'I'm gonna give Olympic Spinning a go today', and my head, jumping on the bandwagon (peer pressure, you know?) decided to put itself through the bathroom wall. Luckily, I have a tough noggin. And also, apparently, a tough bathroom wall. I'm recovering (more from the mayhem reeked on my system than the drywall head-butt) but, needless to say, this story is going to fall behind for a hot second. I need to switch to two-week posting schedule while I get back on my feet, because I haven't written in weeks and I don't really know when that'll change just yet._

 ** _Quality Warning:_** _Following that lovely note up, this chapter is probably not up to par editing wise. It only got a once over, so apologies for any mistakes. I also don't find it the most exciting chapter, but setup and chatter is inevitable when your author can't write an episode in anything less than three chapters D:_

 _ **Reviews:**_ _For a second there, this story had 66 chapters and 666 Follows. That made me grin in a definitely no good dirty rotten sort of way. The, let's say, no good dirty rotten cliffhanger sort of way ;P_

 _ **Chapter Warnings**_ _: Jo's attempting (and failing) cell phone theft, Dean's attempting (and failing) to lie to anyone, Sam and Andy are attempting (and failing) to have any part in this chapter, and Chuck is the only one actually succeeding at anything this episode._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **The Road So Far (This Time Around)**

Season 2: Chapter 34

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A tapping on her shoulder caused Stephanie to look up from the iPod resting in her hands. The music device was something Chuck had offered once she'd run out of things to read (was it normal for an editorial assistant to just…hang around your house all day?) She'd looked at it strangely before, like everything else he'd given her so far, diving straight in with true recluse fashion. Now she pulled the earplugs from her ears by the cord and stared expectantly up at the writer.

"Uh…next chapter," he offered with a sheepish smile at the stack of papers he'd tapped her on the shoulder with. He nodded at the iPod. "Find anything good?"

She took the chapter from him, wrapping the headphones around the small device and setting it on the side table. "Yes. So far I have greatly enjoyed the singing of Robert Johnson."

Chuck grinned widely. "You're a Blues girl. I'm more a Jazz man, myself. You know, he wrote a song about a Crossroads demon?"

The editorial assistant looked up from the first page of the newest batch of chapters to stare at him. "I know. It is on your eye pod."

"Ah." Chuck rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. Of course it was. That made sense. God, he was bad at talking to girls. "Uh. Well…erm…en-enjoy the new chapters."

He turned and headed back towards his desk. By the time he settled behind his computer once more, Stephanie had her nose in the new pages, hand reaching for the iPod. Chuck hadn't really figured this woman for an introvert when she'd first popped up on his doorstep but, ah well, he never had been the best judge of character.

Then again, it was all too possible she just really didn't like him.

-o-o-o-

They didn't even make it to the elevator, the four of them, before Dean's phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket with one hand, hitting the button to go down with his other, before he glanced at the caller ID and froze.

Jo tried to grab the phone before he could answer it, but wasn't fast enough.

"Ellen," Dean started, keeping his voice even as he raised the device to his ear. Jo was right in front of him, glaring daggers up at him and hissing all manner of death threats.

"You heard from Jo?" Ellen's voice was tinny through the speaker, but Dean knew her daughter heard it the second she tensed and those daggers got a thousand times sharper. The older hunter glared right back, keeping his expression neutral. Which wasn't terribly hard to do, since he hadn't decided what answer he planned on giving yet.

"Why do you ask?" Oh yeah. Real smooth. Not suspicious at all. Because Dean Friggin' Winchester was real prone to saying things like _'why do you ask_.' Brilliant.

Ellen made an aggravated noise on the other end of the phone, no doubt behind the bar, a hand on her hip, equal parts pissed off and worried as only a mother could be. "She's been on about this case in Philly for weeks, but I wouldn't let her go. Now she's taken off for the weekend – said she was going to Vegas, but I don't buy it."

"Well, did you check for a paper trail-"

"Of course I did. I'm not new to motherhood you know." Dean almost laughed, but he knew it wasn't the time. "But with Ash as a roommate, you know good as me that means jack."

Dean met Jo's eyes, even as the blonde shook her head vehemently. Beside them, the elevator dinged loudly in the hallway, doors sliding open. No one moved, and eventually they slid shut again.

He heard Ellen sigh down the line, and his guilty conscience only grew. "You'll call me if you hear from her, won't you, Dean?"

The other Harvelle woman mouthed, "Don't you dare!" with a hand fisted in his shirt.

"Yeah, Ellen," Dean answered, and he kept Jo's gaze, no matter how much he wanted to look away. "She called us."

The younger hunter pitched her hands in the air angrily, shoving him back and stomping off away from the elevator. Sam and Andy gave her a wide berth as she passed.

"She's there?" Dean could practically hear Ellen straightening upright with hope. It quickly faltered. "With you?"

He tried not to take it personally, but the quiver in her voice, the fear of her daughter hunting with a Winchester, stung. Dean knew he didn't deserve it, knew Ellen didn't even know him enough to really mean it (and once she did know him enough, she never would have meant it), but it still hurt.

"Yeah."

Jo stalked back around (Sam and Andy shying out of her path again), finger up and jabbing at Dean as she mouthed every threat she could think of in his general direction. Though, there was hardly a point in hiding her presence anymore. Sam looked about ready to hold her back, but Dean waved him off. No reason for more than one Winchester casualty in this.

"Dean, you put her butt on the first flight outta there."

Jo opened her mouth and hissed, " _Try_ it!"

Dean kept her gaze. "I can't do that, Ellen."

Surprise lit the younger Harvelle's face, even as the older sucked in a breath.

"Dean-"

"I can try to lock her out of this, if that's what you want," he continued, watching the surprise morph from pleasant to betrayed all over again in the span of seconds. "But I do that, next time she needs backup on a hunt, it won't be us she calls."

Jo's eyes darted between each of his, hissed protests on pause for now as she watched him with a narrowed, uncertain gaze.

"I don't want that, Ellen. I know a Winchester is the last person you want to hear this from-" and he was going to have so much fun explaining _that_ to Jo, her brow already furrowing- "but hunting with the wrong backup is as dangerous as hunting alone. She shouldn't have to do either."

The silence on the other end was like being stabbed half a dozen times over, but Dean breathed through the emotional pain that might as well have been physical. Ellen didn't know him, not yet. He just kept telling himself that, eyes locked on those beautiful brown ones that he would see to old age this time, he swore it.

"If you know why I don't wanna hear that from you, then you know why I'm asking you to put my daughter on a plane, right _now_."

Dean finally turned away from Jo, away from the others. No way in hell could he stop them from hearing this, but the move was still instinctual self-preservation. "I'm not my dad, Ellen. I can't promise she'll be safe – you know I can't, and I won't lie like that to you – but I can promise I will do everything to protect her. Or sure as hell die trying."

This time, the silence in the hallway was just as deafening as the one on the phone. Dean focused on breathing through it (ignoring the hell out of it), his grip tightening on the phone. Pouring his heart out to everyone around him wasn't exactly within his comfort zone, here.

"Put my daughter on."

Dean passed the phone to Jo like it was a game of hot potato and someone had set the damn thing on fire. Jo was still staring at him, expression less readable now; muddled surprise, confusion, gratitude, and anger made it all too hard to know what she was really thinking. The young hunter took the phone and pressed it to her ear.

"Mom-"

"You listen up, Joanna Beth. You check in every hour, and I mean _every hour_ , or I am on the first flight out there. Do you understand me?"

Jo's eyes snapped to Dean's, surprise painting her face almost as brightly as the smile that spread across her lips. "Yes! I mean, yes. Of course, absolutely, mom."

"Put Dean back on."

The younger Harvelle licked her lips, contemplating saying more, but decided against it. She handed Dean's phone back to him, and he was severely less enthused about getting back in line for the guillotine.

"Ellen."

"You let anything happen to my baby girl, and I swear, Dean…" She couldn't even complete the threat, but the hunter didn't need her to. There had always been a reason he'd been scared of her. A healthy fear, he reminded himself, given the sheer pain promised in words spoken hundreds of miles away.

"I know. You've got my word. We'll call you in an hour."

Dean hung up, knowing the conversation was over, despite them both having plenty left to say. All three of them, if Jo chewing on her lip was any indication. He pocketed his phone and turned away from them, hitting the down button once more.

No one said a word, and the elevator doors pinged open before anyone got the bright idea to try.

-o-o-o-

Dean hadn't remembered where the entrance to the sewer torture chamber was, just that there had been one, because they'd cemented it shut after they'd trapped Holmes in a ring of salt down in his own torture chamber. So they needed a metal detector. Andy, having not made it more than half the length of the lobby with his own Winchester partner, agreed to get one for them when Dean hollered at him. He was, after all, the kind of guy who could get things.

When he showed back up outside the apartment building with metal detector in hand, less than seven minutes later, Jo stared at him with the narrowest of narrowed eyes.

"Are you some kind of thief, or something?" she asked, tone skeptical, as she glanced back at the Winchesters.

"People just like me, I guess," was the kid's response as he handed over the device with a wide smile. "They give me stuff all the time."

Dean grabbed the metal detector and ushered Jo off on their task before she could ask more questions, giving Andy an annoyed glare (which the kid just waved off with an unaffected grin). He was still grumbling under his breath when they started searching for the manhole that would lead them below.

It didn't taken long to find, though it was dark and dry once they dropped down the ladder and landed in the underground system of tunnels. They broke out the flashlights and weapons – salt-loaded shotgun for Jo, iron crowbar for Dean – and started their way back towards the apartment building.

"Nuh-uh," the older hunter said almost immediately when Jo took the lead. He snagged the back of her shirt and hauled her back. "You're rear guard. I'm going first."

"You're kidding, right?" Jo glared at him, one hand on her hip, flashlight illuminating the ground, and the other on her shotgun.

Dean was, in fact, not kidding. He'd never been so serious in his life (okay, slight exaggeration there, he could admit. Still.) He gave her a pointed look to say absolutely no way in hell was she leading this expedition into the monster's layer when said monster wanted to seal her up in a wall and watch her slowly mummify herself to death while he petted her hair and pulled pieces of her scalp off.

Okay, so maybe not so slight an exaggeration, after all.

He must have managed most of that internal rant in a single look, because Jo rolled her eyes, but fell in line. Trailing slightly behind and to his left, she swept her flashlight along the dark, dirt-covered walls of the sewer system. They made it about a hundred yards in tense silence, the kind Dean could tell Jo was about to break, before she finally did in a falsely nonchalant tone.

"So what's going on with you?"

"Don't know what you mean." His own flashlight swept the walls and dark tunnel in front of them.

"Yeah, you do," Jo bit out, suddenly stopping. Dean was forced to stop as well, turning towards her and the caustic words. "You're yo-yoing between being on my side and acting like you don't want me here. _You're_ the one who chose to show up, and now you're giving _me_ crap for it?"

"You telling me I shouldn't have come?"

"Cut the shit, Dean, and tell me what's going on." She targeted her flashlight beam right on his face and he had to look away, squinting past the bright light. "Is there some kind of chauvinistic stick up your ass? Because back at the Roadhouse, you sounded like you had my back. And up top, on the phone with my mom. Now you're acting like I can't even walk down a tunnel right. Excuse me if I have a little whiplash from your flip-flopping."

Jo finally lowered the light, and Dean blinked several times to clear the spots. "You done?"

She put a hand on her hip, likely because she couldn't cross her arms while also holding the shotgun. The beam of light swung wildly in the dark. Her gaze was no-nonsense, learned straight from her mother. She just hadn't mastered the I-will-actually-murder-you-in-your-sleep follow-up vibe. Dean was pretty sure, with time, she'd get that one down pat, too.

"I've got your back, Jo, but I'm not picking sides between you and your mom." Dean grunted low in the back of his throat, keeping his own flashlight trained on the ground and illuminating the space around them. "I know you want to hunt; I got nothing against it. But I don't wanna see you dead. And that's got nothing to do with gender studies, by the way, so you can stow the feminism rant. Woman can do the job just fine, but you're _new_ at this. I showed up to make sure you don't get yourself killed, because I _do_ have your back."

She was quiet for a moment, chewing on the inside of her lip with a stiff jaw. "You think I can't do the job?"

He rolled his eyes. "You're not _ready_ to do the job _alone_. There's a difference, Jo. I don't hunt alone either, not when I can help it, because it's a dumbass decision."

Jo remained tersely silent for another pause. "My dad hunted alone."

Dean sighed, finally dropping his head. Damnit, this was not a talk he was ready for. "So did mine. Look where they both are."

It was harsh, not just for her, but for him too. Even if he'd had just as long as Jo to accept that truth, to get over their fathers' deaths. Even if the brutality of his truth was just a little closer because of an angelic DeLorean.

"Your mom, she's got as much a point about this as you do," he added, veering them away from their dads. Jo snorted, and Dean was the one to flash the beam of light on her face this time before lowering it. "Having someone want more for you than a life of hunting? There is _nothing_ bad about that. Sometimes I wish I'd had it."

His thoughts flickered to his own mom, what she would think of all this, of her sons grown into the life she'd never wanted for them. It had hurt like hell to hear that, the words coming from her own mouth back in 1973. At the time, Dean wished he could explain, could tell her it wasn't all bad. Or worse, he wished he could have saved her, had her as he grew up, to want better for him. But he had stowed it then and he'd stow it now. Wishes like that just wasted time and heartache he couldn't afford.

"You _love_ the job," Jo countered immediately, and he could see the desperate gleam in her eye. How badly she wanted to love the job too.

"Yeah, I do." No point in denying it. "But there are days I wish to hell I didn't. They come more often than you think. You want this, you gotta be prepared for those days, too. And don't fault your mom for wanting better for you. You choose this life, good, fine, that's your choice, and there's nothing wrong with it. But don't spit on your mom's wishes just for having them, either."

Jo didn't answer, but he could tell she was at least taking him seriously, perhaps for the first time since they'd shown up. He might be overbearing here, but Jo had been rearing for a fight the moment they'd arrived. She was too damn stuck on proving herself to people who hadn't been doubting her to start with.

"We gonna find a ghost, or what?" she finally said, clearing her throat pointedly and pushing past him. So far, he hadn't let her lead, and he grumbled as he jogged to catch up. He didn't trust 'Time' worth a damn; there was no way he was letting her out of his sight this time, for any reason. Sao he fell instep alongside her, at least not curtailing her lead but not letting her walk into a trap first, either. As they resumed their trek through the tunnel, Jo glanced his way now and then. "So how are we going to ice this thing, if we can't salt and burn his bones?"

One of the first things Sam had brought up after revealing who they were dealing with, was that H.H. Holmes famously had his remains incased in cement upon his death. So no one would mess with his corpse, of course. Hypocritical dickwad.

"We'll trap him in his own torture chamber," Dean answered easily enough, thinking back to their plan the first time around. It had worked well enough then, no reason they couldn't do that again. "We'll get the girl out, wait till he shows back up looking for her, and trip a salt circle along the walls. Then we seal the entrance and Holmes spends the rest of eternity in his own little circle of cement hell. Was the guy's dying wish, after all."

He grinned over at her, but Jo wasn't returning the look. Instead she was eyeing him all funny again, a raised brow fighting a simultaneously pinched frown. She looked, once more, thoroughly unimpressed.

A weak voice from up ahead, calling for help, interrupted the conversation. Both hunters glanced at each other as the cry repeated, asking if anyone was there, in a scratchy, tired, female voice. Jo and Dean took off running.

Teresa from 2F was, indeed, still alive, just as Dean said. She was trapped in the wall via a cutout that was sealed by a heavy metal gate. Dean got to work on it immediately while Jo kept an eye out for their ghostie, flashlight scanning the room. A circular room, perfect for springing a salt trap. Jo glanced over her shoulder, suspicions starting to form, as Dean got the metal trapdoor open and helped the traumatized woman to her feet.

She was dirty, terrified, and had a chunk of hair missing, but overall appeared in decent health, all things considered. There was also no way she was staying another second in that chamber. Dean spared a look with Jo, and they agreed they'd have to come back to spring their trap, the twitchy woman making it clear she was leaving, with or without them. It's not like they'd come down prepared with salt, or any way to build the kind of trap Dean had been talking about. Just another thing Jo added to the list in her head that had been amassing ever since she'd called Dean that morning.

Their rescued damsel wasted no time once they reached the ladder back to the surface. Teresa took off like a bolting rabbit, and Dean gestured for Jo to follow. The hunter put her hand on one of the rungs, but didn't go anywhere.

"How did you know?"

Dean, having expected her to start up and ready to follow after, was caught off guard and pulled back. "Know what?"

"Any of it." Jo's eyes were sharp, her shrug calculated. "All of it. How did you know Teresa would still be alive?"

Dean's brow pulled down between his eyes, but Jo wasn't buying it for a minute. "Holmes kept his victims alive for days, didn't he? It was wishful thinking, and it turned out to be right."

It sure hadn't sounded like _wishing_. It had sounded like confidence.

"And the room?"

"What about it?"

"You called it circular. Twice."

Shit, he had? He didn't think he had. He shrugged awkwardly, going for defensive but knowing he was off his game. Jo did that to him. Always had. "It's a sewer. Aren't all connection points between tunnels circular or square? Fifty-fifty chance, Jo. I got lucky."

"Like you got lucky knowing I was Holmes' type?"

Dean ground his teeth and looked away. Okay, apparently he still sucked at this. What else was knew? It's not like he'd had any practice, lately. Sam had known for months now, and Andy had Jedi-mind tricked him into confessing the truth before they ever bothered trying to hide it from him. Dean hadn't had to keep quiet for months, hadn't had to pretend he was ten years in the past and didn't know what he knew. He was more than off his game; he was out of practice, and Jo was way too smart not to pick up on it.

Which meant, yet again, Sam had been right. Dean really hated those days (and how often they seemed to happen. Damn smart kid.)

"Alright, look, I- yes, something is going on, okay?" he conceded, a pointed look in her direction doing nothing to lessen that sharp gaze. If anything, it just got more expectant, like she could tell he was lining up to procrastinate this. Jo crossed her arms over her chest and Dean had to speak through clenched teeth. " _Later_ , Jo. I'll tell you later, alright?"

"Nope. You tell me now. I'm sick of you putting me off." She was an immoveable force at the bottom of that ladder, and Dean tilted his head back, cursing Gods he knew weren't paying any attention.

"I'm psychic, alright?" He decided to rip the bandaid off so they could get the hell out of the sewer sometime this century. "Can we go now?"

She didn't move an inch, though she certainly scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right."

Dean sighed, aggravated. He scrubbed at his hair and clenched his teeth. "It's the truth."

Jo just stared, realization slowly kicking in that he looked anything but joking. She dropped her arms. "Bullshit."

"Look, can we _go_?" Dean didn't exactly want to hang out any longer in a serial killer's domain, not to mention a sewer, dried up as it was.

"Oh my god, you're serious." She blinked at him, eyes growing wide before they quickly narrowed in thought. Too damn smart for her own good. "Sam?"

Dean grabbed the ladder himself and started climbing. Screw chivalry and screw waiting around for a ghost to ice their asses. "Yeah, him too, alright? But not in the same way."

"You saw all this, didn't you? What else did you see?"

The silence that followed those questions paused the hunter only a couple feet off the ground. He sighed, thunked his forehead into the rung straight in front of him, and then dropped back to the ground. Apparently, they were doing this.

"You. In one of those slots back there, after he got you in the walls." Dean was, possibly, as serious as she had ever seen him. It wasn't hard to imagine what made him such a good hunter, with a rigid, intimidating posture and a look in his eyes that promised revenge for an event that hadn't even happened. "I lost you, Jo, and Sam and I might have gotten you back, but I _lost_ you. And then you had to sit in there and play bait for a ghost that tried to kill you, and got damn close to succeeding."

"Did it work?"

Dean reeled back. Jesus, had she heard a damn word he'd said? She could read the anger in his expression, and adopted a defensive stance of her own.

"Fear's a teacher, Dean. You said it yourself; I'm new at this. I'm not gonna learn if you don't let me."

Good god. Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbed at his eyes, and let out a frustrated, protective growl. "Damn it, Jo, there's fear and then there's trauma. There's a difference, and I'd rather you have a good, healthy dose of the first and as little as possible of the second."

God knew he certainly didn't have them in that order. Sam, either.

Jo was silent for a moment, shifting her weight. "You know, your number isn't the only one I have. I could have called half a dozen hunters, but I called you because I knew you wouldn't take this away from me."

It wasn't an accusation, it wasn't consolation. It was just…what it was, he guessed. It was annoying, is what it was, and not something they had time for, damnit.

"I'm not trying to take it away from you," Dean professed, suddenly so damn tired.

"You could have told me," she argued back immediately. "You're _psychic_ , Dean. You knew how to solve this case right from the start, didn't you? I thought it was convenient, you guys showing up, pointing out those buildings that just happened to lead to our guy. God-" Jo cut herself off, shaking her head. "You should have told me; we could have done this _together_."

"We are doing it together!" Jo turned away from him, her anger building, and Dean growled again. God, he hated these conversations, and he was _so done_ having them. "Damn it, Jo, every time I try to change something, every time I've told someone so that I can, it's all gone to crap, alright?"

And now he was getting into really dangerous territory, because one little slip and then she'd know his psychic claim was as full of shit as almost everything else he'd told her so far. He was going to lose her – Ellen too – by trying to friggin' save them.

Story of his god damn life lately.

The thought had not even finished crossing his mind when an inhuman howl ripped through the tunnel, its source definitely the torture chamber they'd just come from. Holmes had come back to find his playroom empty of its prize.

Jo froze, eyes going wide, and Dean grabbed the shotgun out of her hand and shoved her towards the ladder, even as she started moving again. He hauled her up the first rung, hardly needing to as she scrambled for it all on her own.

"Go, go, go!" he yelled, shoving at her hip, thigh, then ankle, before turning to fire into the tunnel, though there was nothing to shoot. Yet. Jo was scrambling up the rungs quick as she could, with Dean right behind her, shotgun abandoned on the ground for the sake of faster climbing. They both heard the roar grow louder, and the tunnel leading back the way they'd come grew dark, a supernatural pitch that swallowed up the cement as it hurled toward them at incredible speeds.

Dean knew they weren't going to make it. He grabbed Jo's ankle and tugged. "Let go!"

She did, trusting him completely. He was only half a dozen feet off the ground, and he let go as well, catching her weight as it crashed into his. The two plummeted back to the floor, back to the shotgun that might give them a few extra precious seconds. But whatever happened, he wasn't letting her go. If Holmes wanted her this time, he was taking both of them.

But when had Dean ever gotten what he wanted in life?

Wind tore through the tunnel, darkness enveloped them, and the weight in his arms was gone by the time he hit the floor. As dim light returned, his flashlight flickering back to life on the ground beside him, Dean scrambled to his feet, gun in hand, barrel swinging wide.

It was too late. He was alone in the tunnel and Jo was nowhere in sight. He'd lost her again.

-o-o-o-

Chuck looked up from his desk to the editorial assistant suddenly standing beside it, stack of papers in hand. He pulled the pencil out of his mouth, eraser end all chewed up. A habit he had anytime he hand-wrote (which was usually when he had writer's block). The thought alone was enough to have him glancing down at his scribbles with some mixture of dismay and acid reflux.

The writer offered a weak smile to Stephanie instead, happy for the distraction.

"What did you think?"

She looked down at the chapter she'd just finished reading and offered an approving nod. "Dean is psychic?"

"Dean is…something." Chuck tapped the end of the pencil against pursed lips before sighing and tossing it atop the notebook in front of him. Not like the thing was doing him much good anyhow. "I'm not sure what, yet. But he thinks he's psychic."

Steph made a noncommittal noise, something of a hum, before handing the packet over. Chuck didn't take it right away, and if he was disappointed by her stoic reaction to his work, he didn't show it. The moment lengthened, Chuck just staring up at her, contemplation flickering across his face, before the writer – and also something much more than the writer – reached out to take the chapter. As he did, his fingertips brushed the back of her hand for the quickest of moments.

He took the papers back and set the stack on the desk beside him.

Stephanie turned away, likely to retreat back to her chair, but paused. She was rubbing the back of her hand absently, a silly little tingle spreading just beneath the skin there. Like a cool breeze. When she turned back to Chuck, there was a strange look on her face.

"She will be alright, won't she?" The writer raised his eyebrows, and Steph clarified, "Jo Harvelle?"

"Ah." A warm smile crept across Chuck – and not Chuck's – face. "You'll have to wait and see."

The woman – who was not really a woman at all – frowned at that, an emotion on her face not unlike confusion. It was replaced with the same narrow-eyed suspicion she got in those false blues anytime the writer teased her. Chuck just smiled wider and his editorial assistant huffed, dropped her hand, and headed back for her chair.

Chuck – and not Chuck – picked the pencil back up and got to work.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **A/Ns:**_ _Reminder that we'll be switching to a two-week posting schedule for a while. I'll let you know when I think that'll end as soon as I know myself (aka, as soon as my brain stops being fuzzy and my body stops trying to have nap time all the time)_

 _ **Up Next**_ _: Time's doing things backwards, the boys are destroying private property, Ellen wasn't joking about that flight, Andy's an incredibly handy Jedi to have around, and Tom's finally working on that Plan B._


End file.
